


The Persistence of Gravity

by CatsOnMars



Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M, First Love, First Time, Imprinting, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:21:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatsOnMars/pseuds/CatsOnMars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His father was a complete screw-up who hurt and abandoned everyone who needed him, but he tries very hard to be a good kid, a good student, a good friend and son. And he swears to himself as he watches Leah sleeping now that he'll always be good to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Persistence of Gravity

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm really interested in Sam and Leah as characters and their relationship we don't know much about, I wanted to write a fic trying to show their story in a very personal way that would make the heartbreak it caused Leah (and also the guilt Sam has over it) very real and understandable. Of course, this is also influenced a lot by my strong feelings that imprinting is basically everything love shouldn't be in a good love story (or, you know, life). And I was unprepared for how invested in this I actually got and how much it ran away with me and got much longer than expected.
> 
> As a nitpicky note, I know Seth's age in this is way off. At the time I started writing this I somehow had the idea that he's only about three years younger than Leah. But it's a kind of integral detail in one part that would have been hard to fix, so try to ignore it, LOL.

Sam has known Leah's whole family since he was a kid, but it isn't until one day at school near the end of his Junior year that he really notices her.

He is seventeen, tall and broadening, and she is nearly sixteen. Everyone has been let out of class to go to an assembly with the Seniors doing the traditional end-of-year skits, and after he finds a seat in the gym and is sitting by himself bent over his math homework she appears coming down his row looking for an empty seat.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees just a tall and slender but soft figure, filled out at the hips and everywhere else that it's nice to see some shape, all inside a snugly fitting sweater and slim faded jeans and framed darkly with very long and smooth draping hair. As she stops by him to take the empty seat on his right, he's pretty sure at first glance that she isn't anybody he knows, because if he'd seen her a lot he would _know_. So when he looks up just long enough to tell who it is, he's so taken aback that he has to stop himself from gaping at her a moment and letting her notice him staring.

And then immediately feels like some ridiculous pervert, and puts his attention back on his homework as she sits down beside him.

Not a minute later someone sitting behind them throws a wadded-up candy wrapper at her head. After it lands in his lap, Sam looks behind him at the same time that she turns around in her seat with an annoyed look, glancing just long enough to see a freshman guy grinning diabolically at her before he looks back down and pretends to mind his own business. He's pretty sure the freshman is the son of Isaac Parks, a guy he used to know as his father's boss, named Ray or Rob or something.

"Oh _God_ ," Leah says in a heavy, exasperated sigh after seeing who is behind her.

"Hey babe," Sam hears him saying, in an intentionally irritating kind of way. "I had to sit here just so I could look at your pretty head."

"I told you, Ray," she says dangerously, not at all playing along with his teasing. "I don't want you talking to me. I don't want you _near_ me. We're not friends."

"Oh, gimme me a break," he says. "You're no fun anymore."

"I'm not fucking kidding. I told you to stay the hell away from my brother. Can't you just leave _him_ alone?"

"Why are you being such a bitch? I haven't _done_ anything."

"I know there's only one thing you and your buddies _do_ anymore. Seth doesn't need to be hanging around with a bunch of scumbags like you."

Ray just lets out a laugh and says nastily, "Wow, I can't believe what a _hypocrite_ you are, Leah."

She leans in a little closer to him, speaking more softly but in a way that somehow sounds twice as serious and threatening as before. "He's _thirteen years old_. I swear if I ever find out you gave him anything—"

"You'll what?" he asks tauntingly, still laughing at her. "Tell on me? You care too much about what everybody thinks of you to do that."

"Oh, you think there's somebody in this school besides your only two real friends you've got in the universe who will give a crap if I rat you out? That's just pathetic. Most people don't like you as much as they pretend to, you know. That's kind of sad if it really comes as much of a surprise that _I_ don't."

Sam can't see Ray's reaction, but in the following beat of tense silence he can picture his face finally looking not so at ease.

"You can screw yourself," he then mutters to her darkly, finally seeming to have had enough as he gets up and goes off to find somewhere else to sit.

Leah turns back around with a loud and frustrated exhale of breath as Sam watches her out of the corner of his eye. Then he steals a closer look as she crosses her arms and just starts to sit very still, tightened up uncomfortably all over as if with the effort to contain her frustration. She acted so cool and unaffected in the way she said those things, but she's a bit rattled now. He gets the faint impression that some of the things Ray Parks said actually got to her just a little. He wonders if they used to be pretty good friends once.

He wonders why he's so interested.

That's when she turns her head just a little and catches his eye. And the look on her face of sudden recognition is unmistakable; she hasn't realized until just now that it's someone she knows sitting next to her. Apparently she's not the only one who has grown enough to not be obviously recognizable.

He looks down right away, trying to look casual about it as if his eyes were just drifting aimlessly toward her, but the damage is done. She turns her face away as well as if she's also a little embarrassed after having that conversation next to him. It seems to leave nothing else but for him to not bother hiding that he heard everything.

"You okay?" he asks tentatively, looking back over at her.

She sighs, meeting his eyes and smiling half-heartedly. "Yeah. It's nothing."

"That sounded pretty brutal."

That makes her smile a little more fully and she says, "Yeah, I can get that way."

Then Sam's smile is slightly amused, made impossible for her to miss by how much he tries to hide it by looking down away from her.

"What?" she asks, raising an eyebrow.

He shakes his head dismissingly, his answer coming out quiet. "I...didn't really mean you."

Leah giggles softly, the sound almost nervous but not quite, and then she takes a deep breath and seems to completely collect herself. "I don't know why it gets me so worked up," she admits. "Seth's a good kid. I'm sure he's not going to get into anything he shouldn't be doing."

Sam shrugs. "I don't know, I'm sure if he were my brother I'd be just as pissed. And you never know. Living in a place as boring as this, people can end up doing things that they know probably isn't the best idea just because they've got nothing better to do."

She laughs lightly. "Yeah, that's exactly what my cousin Emily always says. She's got _four_ brothers who are amazingly dumb for not really being dumb." Then she smiles straight at him, seeming to look for something in his face, and adds in a way that sounds just slightly teasing, "But you sound like you're talking from experience."

He just avoids her eyes again with a tight smirk.

" _Hm?_ " she presses.

Looking back at her, he just asks, "What about you? Sounds like you know that Parks kid pretty well."

She starts to look vaguely embarrassed again, and then sighs a little and shakes her head. "Wow, I can just imagine what you must think of me," she says with a short laugh. "I bet you only even remember me as some skinny little kid you used to see at church."

"I'm sure you haven't done anything _I_ didn't try at your age," he says with a shrug, feeling a little odd about how much she seems to care what he thinks, even if her tone isn't that serious. "But actually, yeah—When you first came over I barely recognized you."

She gives a nod. "Yeah...I remember I always liked your mom. She was nice, and she...once she gave me some Life Savers she had in her purse to help shut me up during the service." She laughs at the memory while he raises his brow, a little surprised she would remember something like that. "How's she doing?"

He just nods and says, "Fine."

She grins like she's amused by his short answer, looking closely at him again. "You're not really big on talking, are you?" she asks.

He meets her eyes with a look that mirrors her own playfully scrutinizing one, a slightly tinted reflection of it. "You're kind of pushy, aren't you?"

Her smile turns a little warmer somehow and then she turns and looks forward, crossing her legs. "Well...that's okay."

The assembly is finally starting, all the students now seated in the gym. He and Leah don't speak or look at each other again the rest of the time, but as the Seniors perform their skits making fun of the teachers and staff they both occasionally break into low laughter along with everyone else. Her laughter is a little deep and throaty, not light and giggly, and after a while Sam's hearing seems to single out the sound among everything else around him so that as the lights are down he never stops being very aware of her presence beside him.

 

His father left when he was twelve and was hardly ever around even before that. He never taught Sam how to do anything like fish, fix a car, or carve things out of wood. And then suddenly he was gone. He will never forget how silent everything was for a couple weeks in anticipation of some sign that he wasn’t just gone for good, and then finally he came home from school one day to find his mother crying on the kitchen floor. He was the one who comforted her as she kept saying, "What am I going to do?"

Everyone who knows Sam knows all about this. It is a very small community in La Push. Sometimes it can feel like living with the dark shadow of his father’s reputation following him is as tough as having a great man of an ancestor to live up to and constantly be compared to. Now that the old man is long gone, his home is quiet at night without the heated rising voices and the cupboards in the kitchen are always dry, and it seems like he and his mother have even more of nothing than they used to, if it is possible. They save extra money in a jar on top of the fridge and Sam works shifts at a gas station after school and helps make sure the bills always get paid. 

When almost nothing is expected from you, it can make it just as hard to motivate yourself to be anyone as when a lot is expected from you. But he doesn’t let it all discourage him. That shadow in his mother’s eyes when she looks at him that is Lee Uley is something he consciously keeps in check. He is never going to be that way. He works hard at his job. He gets all A’s and B’s in school. He is already thinking about applying for college scholarships even though it’s hard to just get a free ride with everything covered. He doesn’t know. He’ll work out something. He will not just be nothing like _he_ was.

He would have made a horrible protector. But Sam does not know about all of that yet beyond just the superstitions. He doesn’t know what else he has to be scared his father passed onto him.

 

Sam has always been a little quiet and enigmatic, in a way that might make it easy for some to assume that he just doesn’t like many people. It isn’t that he’s shy at all. He is just a reserved kind of person who won’t talk just to fill up silences or smile easily unless he really means it. He has a certain removed and centered presence that keeps people at somewhat of a distance; if students he knows happen to see him somewhere outside of school, they usually aren’t going to bother smiling at him or saying hi.

But after their brief first conversation, there are a couple times Leah sees him around school, suddenly unavoidably noticeable to him now that he knows what’s there, and as she is standing or walking in the halls with a whole pack of friends she catches his eye briefly and smiles. Expecting nothing back and waiting for nothing before she then turns her attention right back to her friends, she just flashes him this fearless and sly smile that seems to say, _Yeah, right. You don’t fool me._ And he isn’t sure what she means by it.

Then when the Black twins celebrate their birthday with a big bonfire at the beach, she is there. Sam’s best friend Steve gets invited and brings him along as well as his cousin Paul. It looks like every student in the Senior class and then some are there, and he doesn’t even notice Leah among them until a bunch of people start making some noise freaking out about a huge spider crawling along the table where all the food is. She quickly moves to kill it with an easy smile, making a fist and smashing it with the side of her hand, and then everyone around her erupts into cheers and laughter.

Later in the night, Sam passes by a spot where a lot of girls have set up a net and are playing volleyball, and he notices the ball soaring right toward his head before he sees her quickly backing up to try to hit it. He catches the ball at the same time that her body is suddenly colliding against him, knocked off balance for a second so that she briefly grabs onto him as she turns to the side to keep from falling over. Then she looks up and sees who it is behind her and laughs as her face quickly cracks into a natural smile.

“Oh. Hi,” she says as she turns all the way around to face him.

He stays silent, returning the smile all with his eyes as he just hands her the ball.

“Thanks,” she says, and then before turning around her eyes drop away from his face a little and then stop halfway down his upper form as she notices something. “Hey, you’ve got something...”

She reaches up to his chest where a small remnant of a potato chip is clinging to his shirt where it spilled and brushes it off. The light and simple touch feels like it lasts longer than it really does. And then she looks back up at his face once again with _that_ smile, the elusive teasing tantalizing one she gives him when she sees him at school but doesn’t talk to him which it sometimes seems like he could just be imagining, before turning back to the game.

After the party, he and his friends laugh together walking back.

“Hey, who’s that girl who kept picking all the lousy music?” Paul asks at one point. “I know I’ve seen her around with Maggie Allen a lot.”

“Oh, Leah Clearwater,” Steve says. “She’s a freshman.”

“ _God_ she’s cute.”

Steve laughs, the sound echoing pleasantly in the open, breezy night. “I know.”

Usually Sam might say something to agree or disagree, or he’d at least mention that he’s known her family a long time. But for some reason he just remains silent next to them then, as if he has stopped paying much attention.

When he gets home, he finds that his mom has fallen asleep on the couch watching television, curled up under a blanket with an unfinished cup of tea sitting by her. She wakes up after he turns off the TV and starts to take her mug away into the kitchen, muttering, “Sam?”

He turns back to her and says, “Hey” as he kneels on the floor to be level with her face. “Is your cold still real bad?”

She nods dismally. “I’m hanging in there...What time is it?”

“Pretty late. Almost eleven.”

“Oh, wow...Oh Sam, did you get a chance to change that tire today?” she asks, remembering it suddenly.

“No, mama, I said I’d take care of that tomorrow,” he says. “I had plans tonight, remember?”

“Oh, right. The...Rachel and Rebecca’s party.”

“Yeah. I’ll get the spare on tomorrow, and if you’re still not feeling well I’ll go take it in to get it fixed so you can get to work on Monday. I promise.”

“Okay,” she says, easily assured and smiling up at him, “I know you will...So did you have a good time?”

He nods and answers shortly, “Yep.”

“Good.” Still smiling, she reaches out and brushes her hand down his face, some deep warmth coming into her eyes behind the glassy tiredness. “You’re a good boy.”

Sam smirks before he stands back up, leaves the room muttering, "Goodnight, ma."

 

Nearly a couple weeks later, Sam’s mom comes home and tells him she ran into Kathy Morganroth and Sue Clearwater shopping together at the fabric store. A long conversation between the three of them lead to Kathy inviting both of them for dinner the coming weekend so that while they're over she can show them her very ambitious sewing project. Sam is invited as well, of course, and he feels ridiculous for the way his mind slips away out of the moment for a few seconds after he hears that all of the Clearwaters will be there.

He is used to seeing Leah looking very polished and made-up, hair shining smoothly and often styled, wearing long earrings picked to look good with her blouse and heeled boots. But on Saturday night she shows up with her hair tied back in a loose, slightly sloppy long braid and wearing just a faded red tank top, very old-looking sneakers, and jeans that have some off-white stains on them. She apologizes for coming like this, explaining to Kathy as she helps take a casserole out to the small and packed table, "I've been helping a friend paint her bedroom all day and didn't get time to change. I really hope the paint stains won't come off on your chairs or anything." But besides that, she seems completely comfortable with her less than immaculate appearance, as self-possessed and unconscious of herself as ever.

She and Sam never speak directly to each other through dinner. She drops into conversations and cracks jokes as often as any of the adults there, while Seth and the Morganroths’ oldest kid Collin get into their own separate conversations sitting next to each other. Leah keeps shifting position in her chair a lot, at one point leaning back to stretch her arms over her head and then reaching behind her and rubbing her upper back as if it feels sore. Sitting at the other end of the table on the opposite side, Sam takes notice of all this like he can’t help it.

Finally after dinner, the parents all start washing dishes or gathering in front of the TV together, and Sam and Leah both follow all the younger kids out to the garage and stand by watching as Seth and Collin play darts. They both laugh lightly whenever one of them misses the target board very badly, while Collin's little sister Sandra just complains that they won't let her play, and then after a while Leah starts blinking and gently rubbing at one of her eyes.

When she touches Sam's shoulder briefly, it is almost like he knew he was about to feel it. “You want to show me where the bathroom is?” she asks, evidently remembering that he went to use it earlier. “I need to fix my contact.”

He knows this game, he thinks. It is not a big house and she could easily just be told where anything is. But of course he shows her anyway, and they don’t say anything as they move through the dark parts of the house together. She never seems to expect him to.

Instead of going back outside while she is in there, he stands in the hall right outside of it and looks at some small framed art on the wall. Then when she comes out, pouring light from the doorway before she flips the switch, she goes to stand right next to him and follows his gaze to peer at one of the pictures, almost touching him shoulder-to-shoulder. Then he looks down and meets eyes with her, fixing her with a piercing stare to show quite clearly that he isn’t the least bit interested in this picture.

In silence, Leah just smiles a little, devastatingly in the dim light that gives a certain extra softness to her skin. Then she starts to turn, as if she is about to walk away and go right back to the others in the garage, but he reaches up and holds her jaw in his fingers a little firmly, turning her face to look right at him again.

“Are you playing hard to get?” he murmurs.

She smiles again, more gently, the tiniest trace of what might be shyness showing. “I think I’m a little young for you to be playing hard to get," she admits.

“You think so?” he asks, his mouth turning up into a half-smile—because as a matter of fact, it is exactly the reason he has been trying to wait for her, looking for her clear allowance if not for her to move first.

He keeps looking closely at her for a still moment, reading her face, wondering not for the very first time how used to this kind of thing she is. Then he glides his hand down to the smooth bare skin of her shoulder, deciding not to bother with any preamble after stepping delicately around the question long enough.

“I’m going to kiss you, okay?” he says quietly.

The words hold her in place for just one more silent second, and then she just laughs a little. “Not _here_ ,” she whispers. “Let’s go for a walk. Seth and Collin will be busy out there forever..."

So they quietly sneak out through the front door, going off without passing the garage so that nobody sees them and everyone can assume they're still with the other group. The Morganroths live closer to the beach than anyone Sam knows, and they automatically head away from the house in that direction in the quiet, peaceful night.

"Does your back hurt?" he asks when he notices her reaching back and rubbing it again.

"A little," she says. "I feel stiff all over after working all day..." As she drops her arm down again, she reaches over with it and takes his hand.

She asks him simple questions to get him to say a few words, gently prying open his shell even though it feels like she could already have all his pearls in her hands; none of the answers he gives her, about general things like what he does and doesn’t like about school or why she stopped seeing him at their church years ago, seem to come as a surprise to her.

When they reach the circle of logs for sitting around fires she does not tell him to sit down, just lightly pushes him backwards over to one of the logs until he drops down and sits on the ground against it. She settles herself down in the sand right between his bent legs, but instead of leaning all the way back against him she sits forward a little and then pulls her braid over one shoulder so it isn’t hanging over her back anymore.

“What are you doing?” he asks in a lightly bemused tone as she seems to be waiting for something.

“My back hurts,” she reminds him simply.

“...Oh.” He smirks, reaching up to her shoulders and starting to massage her with his large hands.

She makes soft, contented sighs in her throat in response to his touch, and he can feel her loosely relaxing all over. After a while he leans forward and starts putting slow, lingering kisses on her neck. Eventually she leans back against him and he can see the small, delicate smile on her face that she seems to be showing unconsciously as her eyes are closed. This is how she wants it done, he guesses, gradually building up to the point with a slow burn. In a way this feels so different than with any other girls he's been with before, and he's in no hurry himself. And he can't help but still feel a little unsure and hesitant about every little advance. She is fifteen, unbelievably beautiful but not this beautiful and perfectly ripened for touch since very long, and he doesn't know what is and what isn't new to her. But when she is finally resting all the way back against him and his hands move down exploring new places, brushing his fingers over her skin down her arms and clutching around her waist, the tiny smile on her face is relaxed and pleased.

She keeps her eyes closed as he tilts her face up to lean down and kiss her, and she responds so eagerly that everything seems to suddenly gain an unrestrained acceleration. She feels small and soft in his arms but as she turns in his lap to hold onto him around his shoulders her grip is so strong and tight. She kisses him with a kind of hunger and endlessly burning energy like she wants to consume him, not just be touched and caressed in a more soft and gentle way. He can tell from the way she feels in his arms, if he couldn't before, that this girl is not the kind who is going to gasp and bury her face into his chest getting scared while watching horror movies. This woman. He has seen her around since they were both very young, but where did she come from?

"I think you should suggest to your parents that they invite me and my mom over for dinner soon," he tells her later when they're about to creep back into the house. "Let them get to know me a little more before your dad gets to wish he could come after me with a shotgun."

She giggles low and quiet, smiling more vibrantly than he's ever seen her smile before. Before turning to slip inside, she kisses his throat, sending tickling electricity coursing through his body that lasts even after she is four feet away from him. What is it about her that makes him feel like he's never done all this before?

He will not wonder for a long time what makes him so sure right from the start that this is different. The first one that changes everything.

 

During the whole summer a day hardly ever goes by that they don't see each other.

Leah takes him along to her familiar hangouts with her large group of friends, going to movies in the day and various unsupervised shindigs at night. She always knows somehow if there is a party happening somewhere out in the woods or at the house of somebody she may not even know in Forks. Any view he has of her as innocent due to her being younger becomes more and more dissolved as he gets to know her. She can hold four beers almost as well as some guys his own age he knows, and he is always teasing her about how she's obviously just trying to prove to him how tough she is so he won't think of her as some pure and uncorrupted little sophomore.

Sam hardly ever drinks much himself. Sometimes all he can see inside the green and brown bottles is the blood of his father. She never asks why, seeming to easily understand on some level and know that it has nothing to do with disapproval of it, or of her. It's something she likes a lot less than disapproval but won't fault him for all the same.

More often, though, they spend time with Sam's friends, and he observes that Leah seems somehow more natural and comfortable that way, like a slightly different and more down-to-earth person. After spending enough time with her he has caught on pretty easily to how Seth is practically her best friend in some ways, probably one of the only people she'll completely let her guard down with; it seems like having only a brother, as well as a mother who is more of the tough love variety than maternally coddling, has made her almost more fit for male companionship. She is just as happy to hang out in Port Angeles shooting pool at a sports bar or watch hilarious blaxploitation movies with Sam and the boys as she is to go shopping with her girlfriends.

Then one day he, Steve, and Paul go cliff-diving and she wants to come.

Paul and Steve go first, shouting enthusiastically on the way down. Leah watches them descend and then stays peering down at the waves far below, her toes just inches from the edge of the cliff. Sam stands right behind her, holding her waist and looking down at the sea over her shoulder.

"You scared?" he asks.

She shakes her head and replies in an easy tone, "No."

"You got to be at least a little scared. That's what makes it fun."

Looking back at him a second, she grins a little smugly. "Well, I'm really not—"

Her words turn to a short, shrill sceam of shock when he jerks her forward suddenly as if starting to push her over the edge, but he immediately pulls her right back against him and starts laughing at her. She turns right around, also laughing loudly, and grabs him tight around his middle with her breath suddenly a little frantic, muttering, "You jerk."

He keeps laughing, more quietly, in deep vibrations against her face as he leans over and kisses her temple.

"You're not going to tell your parents you did this with me, are you?" he asks.

She just snorts with laughter. "You're always so worried about them not liking you. As if _you_ could be a bad influence on me..."

"Come on, girls!" Paul's faint voice calls from far down in the water, and they both laugh a little again.

Leah grins a little mischievously, standing up tall to kiss him before he stops leaning into her. Then they just stand looking at each other for a preparing moment. Here they go.

When they jump, the frightening and heart-gripping thrill overtaking them with gravity's fierce pull for what seems like such a long moment before they hit the waves, he feels like they are more powerful than anything together right now, like they could survive any kind of fall. She goes first, and then he hits the water right after her. They find each other while still under the ocean, grasping hands as they kick themselves back up, and then reach the surface already locked together in another kiss. Steve reacts to the extensive public display by splashing both their faces with water. Leah lifts a hand up to show him the finger as she and Sam just keep kissing carelessly with their eyes closed, making both the others crack up laughing.

 

Time seems to fly by very fast. After they have been seeing each other for almost nine months, Leah owes Seth a lot of cokes because she promises to buy him a drink every time he doesn’t tell their parents she’s had Sam over at the house while they weren’t home, and she and Mary Uley have bonded over a TV show they both love and get along so well they sometimes monopolize all the conversation when she's over at Sam's house and end up joking about making him feel left out. With how little he has in the world compared to other people, she is already starting to feel like family to him. His whole life feels bigger than ever before. It seems more like it's going somewhere now.

One day at school as he walks to his next class with Steve she sees them in the hall, walking at the other end with some of her friends. As soon as they meet eyes, she says a quick last word to her friends and then breaks away from them to rush forward toward him. Sam automatically picks her up off the floor when she flies into his arms with a giddy grin on her face, lifting her up and then saying in a low voice, "Hey, Lee-lee" before starting a trail of light kisses up her neck as her arms wrap around his shoulders.

"Why don't you two just get married already, goddamn," Steve teases with a laugh before leaving them on their own.

Sam sets her back down when a teacher standing nearby starts giving them a warning look, and then he takes both her hands in his. "That sounds a lot better than going to Richardson's class," he sighs. "What do you say? Want to ditch school today? Run off and get hitched?"

She laughs and says, "Sounds like someone has a pretty early case of Senioritis. All ready to be an adult as soon as possible?"

The idea makes him look more exasperated. "Not far from the truth," he admits. "Never thought I'd be so tired of this place. If _you_ didn't go to this school..."

"Hey now, you can't be losing motivation yet. Aren't you applying for those scholarships soon?"

"Yeah," he says, looking a little unhappy to be reminded of them.

"Come on, stop feeling so intimidated by it," she says, letting go of one of his hands to hit his shoulder lightly. "I keep telling you, you work so hard it's ridiculous and that's bound to show."

" _Okay_ ," he says relentingly, seeming to find her efforts of convincing him to be unnecessary as if he wasn't completely aware of his own expression before. "If you say so."

The halls are beginning to clear out; there is only about a minute left before the next class period. As she stands up on her toes with her hands at his chest, he has to bend down far to meet her for a final kiss. Something makes her lips tighten in a held-back smile as they're still against his, and then after they pull apart she looks a little amused.

"God, you're getting _tall_ ," she remarks before sliding her hand out of his as she walks away.

 

Some days after school Leah comes to meet him at the gas station when he gets off work so they can go back to his house together. Mary is always home by this time, so often she eats with them and then she and Sam spend the rest of the night doing their homework together.

One day while she's over she is so tired after not sleeping well the night before that she keeps yawning and seeming just slightly inattentive whenever they talk. After Sam leaves her working on Spanish to get a quick shower, he comes back to find her curled up on the couch napping and smiles down at the sight.

He sits on the edge of the couch by her feet, staring at her a while. In all the time they have spent together, he has never seen her sleeping before. It fills him with an unbridled and perceptibly expanding kind of softness to watch her this way. She is lying in the same place and in almost exactly the same way his mom was when he came home and found her asleep here the night of the Blacks' birthday party last spring.

The really horrible thing about the way his father was able to just leave her behind without looking back is that Sam knows she still completely believed he loved her up until that day he found her hopelessly collapsed on the floor in the kitchen. She believed there was something that would always hold them together, no matter how bad things were and no matter how much worse they got. And what is so messed up, which he thinks about sometimes, is maybe he really did love her and it just wasn't enough anymore, not enough to make him a good and strong person.

Everyone knows how his father was a complete screw-up who hurt and abandoned everyone who needed him, but he tries very hard to be a good kid, a good student, a good friend and son. And he swears to himself as he watches Leah sleeping now that he'll always be good to her. He knows the words would only sound ridiculous and unnecessary to her said out loud, so he just has to make the promise silently.

Sometimes he used to wonder if he is supposed to feel like he could be happy spending every single waking hour with her and nobody else if he really loves her. If it's okay that they have days when they're tired or distracted and they don't talk as much or kiss and touch with the usual enthusiasm. He used to wonder if this is it, what so many songs and flowery novels are written about. He wondered when and how he's supposed to be sure Leah is _the one_ , like they say, when the world is so big and he's still young and has lived just a simple life in one little town so far.

But now these thoughts don't even occur to him anymore. If there is anything out there better than this, any undiscovered possibility beyond his imagining, he doesn't feel any desire to know or find it. He no longer wonders, and he supposes that must be true contentment, the greatest happiness anyone can ever hope to find. There must always be alternate roads, so all that really matters is being happy enough with the one he is on to never look back.

He knows now. He realizes he has already known for a while, as the conviction gradually settled into him and made itself at home deep inside of him, irremovable. He wants her and only her. He wants to make love to her. He wants to marry her. For the rest of their lives he wants to keep getting into stupid little fights with her on days that they're both in a bad mood and taking it out on each other and then getting over it twenty minutes later every time. He wants to be able to see her sleeping like this when he wakes up on any given morning. Sometimes all he can think when he's with her is _I want_ , as if he doesn't already have all of it in his reach even if not taken already, as if it's an endless changing pursuit to be with her.

That striking knife-smile of hers that is just for him and seems to exist half in his imagination, it is a crescent moon's reflection glimmering and quivering on the surface of moving water, there and real in a sense but not something that can be touched or possessed. Sometimes he grabs her with a sudden, quiet intensity in his face, silencing her laughs with his lips on hers, trying to claim it anyway. The way she always responds leaves no question that she is his, and still he just wants and wants her, so badly.

 

He sits on her bed reading a chapter of _All the King’s Men_ he has a quiz on tomorrow while she moves around her room putting laundry away with her stereo playing. Every few minutes he looks up and watches her in silent amusement as she moves to the music just a little, shaking her hips back and forth and bobbing her head while she hangs up shirts in the closet, looking like she might be doing it half-unconsciously or unaware of being watched. When she catches his eyes on her, making fun of her a little with his expression, she just starts dancing more animatedly and mouthing along to the lyrics to overdo it as much as possible.

“Come here,” he says with a light laugh, holding his arm out and beckoning her with two fingers.

Giggling softly, she joins him on the bed and settles against his chest with his arm around her, curling one leg up over his. "How's the book?"

"Getting better," he answers, but then shows just how much better by immediately tossing it to the floor and then turning to grab her into a kiss.

After a while the sound of the music has somewhat faded from their awareness. They become more and more tightly entangled, both lying on their sides with limbs crossing. Hands travel under clothes, her fingers grazing across the smooth muscles of his stomach and back, his hand sliding up her waist and then cupping her breast, and all the while their breathing intensifies. It's all climbing, no drop and release, both of them wound tight near the edge they can't go over. Sam slips his hand out of her shirt, turns her onto her back, and then keeps going down, reaching slowly into her jeans. Leah's chest starts to rise and fall a little faster and she draws her legs up, knees pointing into him, her body curling and turning into his touch like a plant curves toward the sunlight. Before long her eyes delicately flutter shut as her lips part and then she drops her head back with a tight rushing gasp and _Jesus_ it's too beautiful, he feels like he is burning all over; his clothes are suddenly much too thick and warm on his body, constraining.

He starts kissing her neck, softly at first, then grabbing on open-mouthed and biting a little as she starts to twist and writhe more under his arm. Soon she's clutching to him tightly with her fingernails digging, pulling him closer, kissing him deeply a moment before throwing her head back again in frantic breaths. As he is leaning over her, the uncontrollable sounds and words coming from her throat brush softly out of her right near his ear.

"Ah... _Hhhh_...Sam—"

Then the music stops playing. The CD is over. In the sudden open and vulnerable silence, he immediately covers her mouth with his to stifle her voice before anyone in the rest of house hears anything. Her last moans come out low and muffled against his lips, and then she goes loose all over. He plants kisses on her cheekbone and one of her eyelids while her eyes are still closed, and then she looks up at him with a slow, small smile.

When Sam has completely lain down again, relaxing next to her as he was before, she brings her head close to his until their foreheads touch and says very softly, "Sam..."

"Hm?"

"We've been together a long time...."

"Yeah," he says, and it sounds like an agreement; he can already guess what she is saying.

"...Yeah," she echoes. "So..."

He lets out a long sigh. "I know." He sits up a little, propping his head up on his hand, and then sounds a little frustrated when he keeps talking. "I wish it didn't have to be such a damn delicate situation, with our houses practically _never_ empty and everything. Sometimes I think the only way it's going to happen is if we just take a blanket out into the woods on a day the ground will actually be _almost_ dry."

Leah's mouth curves into a light-hearted smile. "Sounds good to me," she says.

He lets out a short laugh.

"Well, what did you do before?" She sounds a little unsure about asking it. "I mean...you've been with a couple other girls."

"Yeah, but that wasn't..." He shakes his head and then looks directly at her face, sighing again. "This'll be your first time, okay. Do you really want to just have a quickie in the back seat of my car because we can't get enough privacy anywhere else?"

She bites her lip a second, then reaches a hand to his neck and starts tracing one finger along his collarbone. "It honestly doesn't make much difference to me," she says. "I don't really care about my first time being dressed up with candles and rose petals and shit. It can just be us together, the way we are any day..."

He looks at her with a small smile as she hooks her arm around his neck, burying herself close against him.

"If everything works out right for you, you'll be going away next year," she says, now almost whispering. With her free arm she runs a hand down his chest, and the rest of her words come out with her lips brushing softly against his neck. "I just don't want to wait too long...I've been ready a long time, and now I don't care how it happens. I just _want_ you...really badly..."

Sam turns over on top of her with a soft and miserable-sounding groan, clutching her tight around the waist and dropping his head against her chest. "Dammit, you can't say things like this when I'm...I have to _leave_ in probably ten minutes."

"And now you'll be distracted thinking about it all through dinner," she says, sounding a little self-satisfied about it and reaching up to run her fingertips through his hair.

"I already think about it more than I should for my own good. You don't have to _torture_ me."

They hear a knock on the door followed by Seth's voice. "Leah?"

He rolls back off of her and she sits up with a short sigh. "What's up?" she calls toward the door.

Seth's tone sounds reluctant. "I've got some mail for you. And Mom and Dad wanted me to check that your door's open. You know they don't want you keeping it closed when you have Sam over."

"It's just so the stupid cat won't get in here and knock over my plants!" she says. "It's not even locked."

Hearing this, Sam instantly looks up at Leah with wide eyes and then impulsively draws back away from her a little as if they are still in an indecent position. She nearly doubles over laughing at his horrified reaction, throwing her hand over her mouth to keep her giggles quiet.

"I know," Seth is saying, "but that's what they said."

"Whatever, he's about to leave anyway," she says as she gets up from the bed. Then she can't help but laugh a little more, looking back at Sam who just shakes his head while sitting up on the side of the bed, before she reaches the door and opens it.

Handing his sister a magazine and letter, Seth looks over her shoulder and says brightly, "Hey, Sam."

Sam is now putting a shoe on and holding a pen in his mouth that he was using to mark parts of his book so he won't forget to put it away with his stuff, so instead of saying anything or waving he just nods to him.

"Look, Emily finally wrote you back," Seth says to Leah, pointing to the envelope she still hasn't looked at.

"Oh, _awesome_ ," she says, turning it over to see the writing on it. Then when he turns to leave she mutters after him, "Thanks, Seth."

As soon as she turns around and faces Sam, he looks up at her and shakes his head again while putting all of his homework back in his bag. "You _are_ going to get me shot by Harry one of these days," he says.

She laughs and says, "If my mom doesn't just do the job."

"Yeah, she _is_ kind of the scary one," he agrees. Then, seeing her looking down at the letter again, he nods toward it. "That's your cousin from the Makah rez, right?"

She nods. "I've really been missing her," she says, going over to sit on the bed next to him and then setting the letter down behind her. "She's been going through some intense stuff this year because her father's sick so I haven't seen as much of her, but I'm hoping she'll have time to come stay here a while in May or June. She really wants to meet you."

"You've told her about me, huh?" he asks in a vaguely teasing way.

She just grins shamelessly as she answers, "Of course, _all_ about you. She's pretty much one of my favorite people in the world, we're like sisters."

He raises his brow a little curiously. "Hm. Now it seems kind of weird I _haven't_ met her."

"Yeah."

In the silence following that, they just look at each other not-quite-directly. The atmosphere has turned so sterile compared to a few minutes ago, and there's something awkward about him leaving right after the cold water has been thrown.

Finally he leans in to kiss her goodbye, lightly but sustaining it a few seconds. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?" he says, brushing some of her hair away from her face before standing up.

He stops at the door and looks back at her. "Did you want this open or closed now?" he asks, an edge of sarcasm in his voice while his face stays serious as usual. "I mean...there's the cat..."

Shaking her head with a smile creeping back onto her face, she gets up and goes to grab the door, then lightly pushes him out by closing it on him while he looks back at her with an affectionately mocking expression.

 

The next weekend they go out to eat in Port Angeles. The restaurant has a twenty minute wait for a table when they get there and Leah has left her jacket in the car, so they go back to the parking lot and idle around there for a while. At one point while she is saying something to Sam she sees he's looking past her at something in the distance, not seeming to be paying attention and also looking a little annoyed.

"Hey," she says, nudging him in the side. "You okay?"

He looks back down at her and shakes his head. "Oh, yeah," he says. "Sorry. It's just those pricks talking over there."

Leah steals a glance behind her long enough to see a couple of guys at the other end of the parking lot who are sitting on the hood of a car smoking. "So?" she asks, not understanding. "What's wrong with them?"

"They were just...noticing you," he says, seeming to feel a little ridiculous about it now that he has to explain. "And saying some...you know...typically pricky and degrading kind of things about your appearance."

Her eyes go a little wide in surprise. "What, were they there checking me out when we were inside before or something?"

"No, I mean just now."

She goes silent a moment and glances back at where they are again. "You're telling me you could hear something _those_ guys were saying from all the way over here?" she asks, looking more perplexed than ever. "No way, your ears can't be that good."

Sam is looking at them again, too, seeming to question himself now. "Huh...Yeah," he says, sounding a little distant, and then he looks around them at all the other few people he can see around the parking lot. "I guess I didn't hear it from there..."

She starts to look a little amused, giving him a light smile. "You sure you weren't just hearing yourself _thinking_ indecent things about me?" she asks.

He pretends to have to think about it and then shakes his head. "My mind doesn't exactly sound like that."

Leah holds his hand and starts swinging their clasped hands back and forth a little. "I bet I know what your mind would sound like," she says in a know-it-all kind of tone.

Fixing her with a challenging look, he says, "Okay, so what am I thinking right now?"

"Hm...Well, you have something to tell me."

His face betrays a little bit of surprise. "Which would be...?"

Leah looks very closely at him, her expression getting eager with slightly held-back excitement as she tries to read his face. " _Oh_ , I'm gonna feel really bad now if this isn't it—Did you? You got the scholarship?"

Sam's face falls a little like he's disappointed, but the corners of his lips start twitching a bit. "Well, now that you've made the reveal as anti-climactic as possible—"

"Oh my God, _yes!_ " she says, throwing her arms around his middle and squeezing him.

"How the hell did you know?"

"Gee, it wasn't really that hard." She laughs as she lets go of him. "I knew you'd be hearing about it soon. Then you called in sick today for the first time ever so you could spend the day taking me to dinner instead of working. And your mom let you have the car today. So I had a guess you must feel like taking it easy and celebrating something."

He slowly nods. "Yeah, I guess that would make it all pretty obvious...Though I haven't actually had a chance to tell my mom yet. She just doesn't want to rely on the car right now because the wipers are still screwed up, so I was already going to take it to work anyway."

"Oh, I forgot about that. Why is there always something going wrong with her car? It's not even terribly old."

He shakes his head, rolling his eyes. "I don't know. But you'll have to forgive me if this turns into a pretty lame date because we get stuck not being able to drive in the rain."

"Whatever. You know me, I'm an easily impressed date."

"Thank God for that," he says with a smirk.

Sure enough, later in the night as they're on their way back home some light rain starts sprinkling. They make it just outside of La Push before it starts pouring heavily enough that Sam knows he won't be able to see out of the window much longer and has to pull over onto the side of the road for a while.

Leah sighs, in a resigned rather than annoyed way, and then leans her head back into the seat, closes her eyes, and draws her arms into her chest to cross them tightly like she must be cold. "What is it about rain that makes you feel tired?" she muses.

Now sitting back turning a toothpick around between his lips, Sam shrugs. "I think it's just the cold."

She rolls her head to the side to look at him, her face in a look of calm contentment, and then moves over to him. He brings his arm around her waist and pulls her close, letting her settle comfortably into his side, and then with a look of surprise she raises her hand up to feel his chest.

"How do you feel so warm when I'm freezing?" she asks, sounding almost annoyed by it. "All you're even wearing is a shirt."

"Guess you're just a wuss," he says lightly. "There's no need to nag me when I don't think to take a jacket with me anywhere, you see?"

Leah scoffs softly. "I do not _nag_ ," she says in a very touchy voice.

"Uh-huh. Just tell that to your brother."

She just shakes her head adamantly. Then after a while she closes her eyes again, completely relaxing next to him. The drumming of the rain on top of the car is a soothing constant sound in the background as "Under the Bridge" is playing softly on the radio. Where Sam's hand is rested at her hip, he starts moving just his thumb to the slow and mellow beat of the music, tapping it against her skin right under where her shirt rides up. As she leans her head into him with her eyes still closed, he sees her faintly and peacefully smile for a moment.

After a while he tilts his head to the side to rest it on top of hers, rubs his hand up and down her waist. "You know I'll still see you a lot," he tells her quietly. "I won't be going that far away."

She opens her eyes and gives a small nod. "I know," she says. "I'm not thinking about that today. I'm just happy for you...Today everything feels perfect. Even us getting stuck here together is kind of perfect."

"Yeah," he agrees, feeling like he knows what she means. "It's not bad at all."

Then he turns to kiss the top of her head and whispers close to her ear. "Leah. I love you."

She brings her hand to her hip to rest it on top of his and says back in a soft murmur, "I love you, too."

After a long time the rain still hasn't shown any sign of letting up at all, and Leah seems to have regained her energy after the long drive left her a little lethargic. She turns around and starts searching through everything in the back seat, and after a while Sam asks, "What the hell are you looking for?"

"I'm seeing if that umbrella she always keeps in here is around," she says. "I guess she took it."

"Yeah. Why, you actually want to try to walk in this?"

"We're not even a mile away," she says, turning back around and looking at him. "We might as well just run to your house, don't you think? I don't think this is going to stop any time soon. You could come back for the car later."

Sam looks outside at the drenching walls of water around them and looks quite reluctant to agree.

"We've got to see Mary and tell her the news," Leah says. "And besides, our show is on soon at eight."

He smiles and rolls his eyes a little, unbuckling his seatbelt. "Of course. How could I forget?"

Within twenty seconds of them stepping outside and leaving the car behind, the rain completely drenches their clothes so that they're heavily sticking to them as they run off quickly hand-in-hand. Leah screams when they unavoidably splash through deep puddles and soak their shoes and then laughs it off. After a few minutes of her struggling to keep up with Sam, he grabs her and picks her up to carry her the rest of the way. Holding her arms around his neck, she throws her head back laughing more than ever as he keeps running just about as fast as he was before as if carrying her weight makes little difference to him.

When they finally make it to his house at nearly half past seven, Mary seems to have gone out for something. The house is locked up, and when Sam calls for her inside there comes no answer.

Dripping water all over the floor, Leah starts to shiver like it is only now hitting her how cold she is. "Wow, she'll have fun getting back from wherever she is if she doesn't even have a _defective_ car," she says.

Sam has just unbuttoned and thrown off his shirt, and for just a couple seconds, without meaning to, she goes still staring at him peeling his thin white undershirt away from his wet skin.

"At least _she's_ got an umbrella," he says, turning to her and then maybe catching for an instant how she doesn't seem to have completely heard his words as she recovers from her distracted look. He looks her up and down, taking in the whole sight of her darkened wet clothes, and gestures toward his mom's room. "You better just go find something of hers you can wear."

Leah smiles in a way that seems a little sudden and forced, as if she feels silly because she didn't already think of that and was just standing there dripping like a concentrated rain cloud. As she walks off, he stares after her a few seconds and then his shoulders shake with a light, silent laugh.

She retrieves a plaid shirt and black sweatpants from Mary's room and then goes into the bathroom, where she takes off almost everything of hers to hang up and then gets a towel to dry her hair a little before changing.

"Hey Lee-lee, you want anything to drink?" Sam calls from outside the door.

"Uh...just some water would be good, actually," she answers.

A minute later she comes out wearing the clothes that are one or two sizes too big on her with the shirt sleeves rolled up to her elbows. She finds Sam in the kitchen now changed into a fresh T-shirt and pair of jeans; he is closing the freezer door after putting some ice in her glass of water, and then he goes still when he finally notices a note left for him on the fridge.

Coming to his side, she follows his fixed gaze to the paper with a brief message on it and stands there reading it along with him.

_Kathy asked if I could watch Sandra tonight so I won't be home til after 10:00. Enjoy some leftovers. Love you._

Sam doesn't look away from it until Leah does and reaches for the glass of water he is still holding. Her fingers slowly brush over his, making him look down at her as she takes it from him. Then he leans to his side against the refrigerator and faces her, and she leans back against the counter, looking away from him, and takes a long drink of water. After she lowers the glass, the sound of her swallowing deeply seems very loud in the house where it is just them, standing still and saying nothing. It is just them for the rest of the night.

Leah wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and sets the glass down on the counter behind her. Then, certainly and unhesitantly, she reaches over and takes Sam's hand. He closes his hand around hers securely and then starts to lead her away out of the kitchen. Into his room. She goes in ahead of him and then stands with her back to him as he closes the door behind them.

Sam walks around her and turns to face her. She looks up at him with a deep calmness in her eyes and they stand looking directly at each other for the first time since the moment they saw the note and knew. They both know; it is there and clear in their faces, and there is nothing left unsaid to say, just this.

She comes closer to him and leans her face into his chest, bringing her hands up to the middle of his back. He takes hold of both her upper arms and pulls her against him even closer, and she just closes her eyes and breathes him in deeply. Their breathing and the soft rushing downpour of rain on the roof are the only sounds in their world.

Sam lifts a hand under her face and then tilts her jaw up with his thumb, bends down to delicately kiss her neck while she runs her hands slowly down his back. Then she takes the bottom of his shirt and pulls it up. He is so tall she can only lift it up so far before he pulls it over his head himself. The moment she touches his bare chest, he flinches a little and then takes both of her hands in his with a light smile.

"Your hands are still cold," he mutters, and she softly smiles back as he presses them back to his chest with both his hands covering them to let them get warm against his body heat. Then he starts to kiss her, in a slow and building way, both of them starting to breathe more deeply with a thick anticipation they can feel in the air. He leaves her hands at his chest to reach down under her long shirt and slide the sweatpants down her hips, letting them loosely fall to the floor. Leah pushes at him gently to lead him towards the bed and steps out of them as he starts stepping backwards. She reaches down and starts undoing his fly before they make it, and then he pushes his jeans down and off before they both drop to the bed.

They stay sitting up, Leah half-kneeling as she leans in trailing kisses from one of his shoulders to his neck and inches closer to him until she is straddling him and sitting up a little taller than him. She grabs onto his hair as she kisses him vigorously, then lowers one hand down and brushes the backs of her fingers down his stomach.

"They feel warm now?" she whispers against his lips, and he smiles slightly again as his face moves in a small nod.

In response, she slides her hand down farther and into his boxers; his breath hitches and he freezes tightly as she so suddenly closes her fingers around him and starts stroking him slowly. Then his breath falls out in a long sigh, his shoulders sinking a little as if in some kind of surrender, as he leans into her and buries his face in her neck. As the momentum gains, his whole body getting more rigid and ready, he kisses her deeply holding tightly onto her with his hands raking back into her damp hair. He can see her eyes darkening with growing need as she sees him react to her touch, her eyelids hanging heavier. Then soon they are both moaning softly and beggingly as he brings his hands under her shirt and feels her all over, all of her skin completely naked underneath and so incredibly soft after just drying. Leah reaches up and starts undoing the buttons of her shirt from the top, and he starts at the bottom.

They get three buttons freed before they hear, soft but impossible to miss, the sound of the front door of the house opening.

Both of them go completely still, then look at each other wide-eyed. There is the following sound of the door shutting and then some light footsteps before they start moving quickly, both cursing under their breath.

Leah dives to grab the pants she was wearing and has them on and is sloppily tying the drawstring when they hear Mary call, "Sam?"

On the floor turning his shirt right-side-out with frantic hands, he stays quiet. Smoothing her hair down quickly, Leah starts toward the door.

" _Leah!_ " he whispers.

She is almost completely cool and collected already, muttering back to him, "It'll be fine if we don't come out together. If she sees I was in here I'll distract her and we'll just act like you were changing in the bathroom."

To be as thorough in their show as possible, she flicks the light off before she opens the door and leaves him in the dark as she goes out. He feels around blindly to finish putting his clothes back on as he hears the voices in the kitchen after Leah finds his mother.

"Hey, Mary." She manages to sound pleasantly surprised.

"Oh hi, honey!"

"I thought you'd be at the Morganroths'."

Sam creeps quietly out of his room and then makes a point of opening the bathroom door a little loudly before he goes into the kitchen, hearing the continued conversation.

"Yeah, Collin got back from a friend's birthday party sooner than he thought he would so I didn't need to stay," Mary explains. Then after she exchanges greeting smiles with her son as he joins them, she notices their wet hair and pays attention for the first time to what Leah is wearing and then sympathetically cringes a little. "Oh no, tell me you guys didn't get caught in that rain!"

Leah is amazingly convincing in the way she looks down briefly at the clothes she has on as if she forgot all about them, and then says, "Oh, yeah, I hope you don't mind...But never mind that. Mary—guess who's going to college?"

Something in Sam immediately loosens up and relaxes as soon as she says it with an excited tone, and he almost feels like laughing at how quickly she remembered that as a convenient diversion. It completely left his mind by now.

Mary looks at him with a large grin. "I didn't see you'd heard back from them! You got the letter?"

Smiling calmly, he nods. "I'm officially hooked up."

She hugs him happily, and then even Leah hugs her, looking past her at Sam with a tired smile of relief. He just smirks and shakes his head, and then looks down at the floor for a moment while sighing heavily to himself.

"Hey!" Leah then says with sustained excitement as she glances over at the clock. "And you even got back in time for us to catch _The First Circle_. Sam was so sad we wouldn't be able to watch it together this week."

Laughing at her sarcasm, Mary smiles over at him and says, "Oh, I'm sure."

For the rest of the night as they all sit in front of the TV, Sam is pretty sure neither he or Leah are paying the closest attention to everything that happens on the screen. As they both stare forward, her hand around his hardly ever stops moving, stroking light circles in his palm with her thumb as if she is writing secret messages there.

Later that night after he walks her home, he almost forgets about the car. His footsteps sound loud to him on the ground as he takes the walk back to where they left it parked, the night around him so still and sober after finally getting all the rain out of its system. The silence is so complete that everything that came before during the loud outpour almost seems imagined in its brief and temporary effect, now not quite real and far from reach.

 

The warmth the straining heat is building it's burning in his blood hotter and hotter then it _yanks_ —

The world rips open. He doesn’t know if he has gone insane, if he is awake or dreaming, if he is alive or dead.

Nobody knows where he is for two weeks.

 

Mary hears no sounds of movement in the rest of the house before she comes out of the bathroom in the middle of the night, and when she sees the large, dark shape of someone sitting on the couch she stops on the way back to her room with a short scream.

He does not respond to tell her anything like "It's just me," but right afterwards as her eyes adjust to the dark and he turns his face to look at her she can see for sure that it is him, just sitting still and covered with nothing but a blanket around him.

" _Sam?_ " she says breathlessly, bringing her hand to her chest as she recovers from the shock and her whole figure seems to become heavy and weak with overwhelming relief. Then she goes right to him and throws her arms around his shoulders as she sits down at his side.

"Hey, mama," he says in a tired murmur. His voice comes out sounding raw and weak; he hasn't used it in a long time.

"Oh my God, Sam, I was scared to _death_ ," she says as she frantically fusses over him, touching his hair. "What _happened_ to you? Where—Why don't you have any clothes? Did somebody _hurt_ you?"

He shakes his head, no less bewildered than her. "No. I don't know, I—I wish I could tell you, I don't _know_ what happened."

"Honey, you're shaking so hard—and you feel like you've got a fever!" she says, putting her hand to his forehead after she notices it.

He looks down at himself for a moment as if he did not even realize, then takes her hand away from him. "I...I'm fine, I'm not hurt. Something just...happened to me. Something that _couldn't_ have happened, and I don't know what to think right now. Nothing makes any goddamn sense..."

It goes on for many minutes as he would have expected without them getting anywhere, her continuing to ask him questions and him not knowing what he can say that will not scare her way too much. He has some trouble responding quickly and coherently, feeling like he has almost forgotten how to speak after being trapped in that...shell. The monster. That _thing_ through which everything looks distorted and terrifying. Even now that it's over, he cannot seem to convince himself that it wasn't real because it feels so strange to be back in his own body that it _had_ to be real. He is still adjusting to having normal eyesight back and he can't believe how much he isn't used to feeling his toes.

She starts saying things about how maybe he needs to see some kind of doctor, won't be told no because she simply can't stand that there is not _something_ she can do or suggest right now, and he ends up yelling at her without meaning to just so she will stop freaking out. The look on her face makes him want to bang his head against something. In the first momentary silence they have reached since she found him here, his head falls into his hands and his breath keeps coming in jagged heaves as he still cannot calm down.

Suddenly he needs, he knows, and without thinking about it he says in a low moan, "Leah..."

 

It seems she is lying awake in bed when Sam taps on her tiny bedroom window, because right away he sees her jump a little in surprise at the sound. She rolls over and reaches for the table by her bed to turn on a small and dim lamp and sits up to peer outside through the glass, looking a little dazed like she thinks she might have just imagined hearing someone there.

Then she stares a moment with her mouth slowly dropping open a little like she could be seeing a ghost, and she tears the blankets off of her and flies out of bed and to her door. He runs around the house to meet her at the front door, where she bolts right outside barefoot and in her pajamas without closing the door behind her. She abruptly stops a couple steps away from him, just staring at him and breathing loudly for a few seconds, and then with a pained look crossing her face she swings her hand up and slaps him in the face. He just takes it, the exhaustion and softness in his expression not changing as he looks at her, like being hit by her is all he could ask for right now. Then her eyes start filling with tears before she steps forward and collides into him with a tense gasp, losing all composure.

Just seeing her face again already makes it feel almost like everything is normal and okay again. He picks her up to hold her to him, lifting her feet a few inches off the ground. He closes his eyes just feeling her body against his again, and his voice carries the wear of days and days of inescapable and torturous horror as he just says heavily, " _Leah._ "

She is shaking a little, crying freely as he sets her back on her feet. As she keeps her hands up holding his face and looks up at him, her eyes with tears spilling out of them are full of such intense and overwhelming warmth. Of course he has always known Leah is very emotional underneath her cool and controlled exterior, but he has never seen her like this—not even close—and the deep meaning and force of it makes him feel so weakened he could just melt and dissolve into her.

"Oh God," she says with weak breath as he brushes some of her tears away with his thumbs, "tell me I'm not asleep. Tell me you're really here."

He pulls her close again, running a hand back in her hair and murmuring into her neck, "I'm here, baby."

Leah's hands make fists at his back, grabbing tight handfuls of his shirt. "I thought you could be dead," she mumbles through her tears of relief that keep coming. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"I didn't think I was going to see you again either," he breathes, shaking his head. Then he kisses her, then kisses her again, and again, and then on her cheek and her forehead and everywhere on her face.

"Where were you?" she finally asks as he puts the last kiss right at the corner of her lips.

He shakes his head again, briefly. "Let's just go inside a minute..."

They sneak quietly through the house back to her bedroom, careful not to wake anybody up after her quick run outside miraculously didn't already. In the dark the cat comes by and brushes against Sam's ankles with a low purr like even he has missed him, and Leah has to pick him up and set him aside so he won't follow them into the room. After Leah softly closes her bedroom door behind them, she sits by him on the bed and they immediately kiss each other again. It is slow and gentle and warm, and as their mouths open to each other and deepen the kiss it almost doesn't feel real to him to taste her again. He takes hold of her hair at the back of her head in a tight handful as if he's going to helplessly slip away and disappear again if he doesn't keep holding onto her.

Finally when they break apart, Leah looks at him and brushes her hand down his face, peering deep into the look in his eyes. "What's wrong?" she asks. "Are you okay?"

He sighs softly, closing his eyes briefly as he covers her hand with his to hold it in place over his face. "I think I am now."

She shakes her head, looking at him with sadness and bewilderment. "But what the hell happened to you, Sam? You completely disappeared for fifteen days! We didn't know _what_ to think—Your mom and I, we didn't know if you could have been attacked by something in the woods or..."

He pulls her against him and starts to rub her back. "I'm sorry," he says softly, "I didn't mean to disappear, I really didn't. I'm so sorry you had no idea what happened. The only thing I really know how to explain is...for a long time I thought I'd...lost myself. And I got really scared that I was never coming back and was losing everything. And it was hell."

Leah shakes her head slowly again, still leaning into him, and whispers, "I don't understand."

He gives a long, exhausted sigh, closing his eyes. "Can I ask you for something?...I needed to see you so badly, but I can't stand to think about this anymore right now or I feel like my head is going to crack open. Could you please just...not ask me to explain tonight? For now could I please just hold you?"

He hears a shaky, disarmed kind of breath come out of her like a final discharge of wild emotions as she starts to completely calm down after the shock of seeing him again, and she starts rubbing his upper back in small circular motions. Then she brings her left arm up and around his neck tightly, turns her head in to kiss his cheek and says into his ear with calm acceptance, "Yeah...Okay."

She kisses him again, so decidedly and surely it seems she has easily set aside all concerns. All that matters is that he is safe and they are together again. And it starts out slow like before but then gradually flares into a more heated and desperate direction that he did not exactly expect. Then with the growing magnitude of what is happening, everything seems to weigh down into slow-motion. Leah stops a moment, eyes staying locked intensely with his in the dim light, and starts to lift her top off; the tight-fitting tank peels away from her skin inch by inch and catches slightly over the beautifully sloping shape of her breasts, then tousles some of her hair as she pulls it over her head. Right away he starts to kiss her again with more fervor than ever, and she moans very softly deep in her throat as his hands cover her breasts. Then as he starts to lean her far back, nearly lying on top of her, he slides one hand around between her bare shoulder blades to support her as they start to adjust position and move together to the middle of the bed. When he finally lays her all the way down on her back, they struggle a little with trying to quickly finish undressing while continuing to touch and kiss each other without ever pulling far apart. 

This is real, he tells himself. He swears she is the most beautiful and perfect thing he will ever see, that her hair with its tousled wisps and tangles after she's been lying on it has never looked better, and breathing in her familiar smell again makes him feel like he could cry. Leah shuts her eyes tight and bites her lip through the pain as he carefully pushes into her, staying very quiet even as her stomach heaves and she grabs onto his shoulders tightly. He touches her hair soothingly, waits until she relaxes around him before starting to thrust in a slow rhythm, giving a soft groan as he falls into it and every movement in her is already starting to take him apart. Then he starts thrusting in deeper and a little faster, and though she doesn't tense up like before her eyes widen a little and her mouth drops open in a silent gasp as he fills her so completely.

"Sorry," he whispers quickly, bringing his hand to her face. "Am I—?"

"No it's okay," she says in a rushed murmur, and her hands pulling at his back prompt him to keep going, though something in her face still looks a little caught of guard. "It's just...you're really warm."

Sam frowns. He realizes in this moment that he doesn't really know whether he would prefer to be crazy or for the past two weeks to have been real. But it can't be in his head. There is something _wrong_ with him, and others can tell.

She has no way of understanding what she sees in his reaction, but when he can't help but look disturbed after her words she raises her hand to his face and assuringly smoothes her fingers down his neck and chest. "I don't mean...It's fine," she says softly, and she lifts her head up to kiss his collar bone, her next words brushing soft breath against his skin. "It feels nice."

He closes his eyes, lowers his head down into her shoulder and says in a tight whisper, "I love you so fucking much."

She lets out a fast, catching gasp as he starts moving faster. It doesn't take long for him to easily forget everything again as they cling to each other. Then when she's getting close she grabs him closer than ever and speaks in a strained, broken voice through her ragged breaths, the words seeming to push out without her meaning to say them.

"Don't ever do that again, you can't ever leave me again Sam—"

And the world goes bright and white-hot behind his closed eyelids before he sinks into her with all of his energy spent, feeling like he could just collapse here and sleep for three days. But he waits until she falls asleep, stays watching her a while, and then leaves her to sneak back out of the house. Despite how shockingly much he has grown in recent months, he finds it is easy to creep through the house without making a sound, like a prowling animal. He makes it back home by 3:40, finding his mother back in bed fast asleep, and he leans over her to lightly kiss her forehead before going to his room.

The next day it happens again.

 

It does not gradually sink in, but hits him all at once, how much of a mistake he has made. And the next time he sees Leah, he can hardly stand to look her in the eye.

So, he's a freak. Some kind of not-completely-human monster. And this is something that isn't going away. But now he thinks he'll be able to learn how to manage it. The second time he made the change, he could feel it coming again as the fire started crawling up his spine and kept it smothered just long enough to get hidden away in the woods, ignoring friendly waves from neighbors he passed and keeping his fists clenched at his sides with the concentrated effort it took to hold it off. He was able to get a hold of himself after a few hours and discovered that focusing on trying to force the change to reverse was only effective once he could clear his head of all the anxiety about whether or not it would work. He can't force it and must simply let it happen, let it pass. He has to get used to it enough that he can learn to make himself calm down. It seems to make it completely real at last that there is no fighting this.

So he understands it now. A little. There is at least some method and order to the madness of the kind of world in which something like this could happen to him. This makes it somewhat easier for him, but somehow just brings more into focus for him how everyone else cannot possibly understand. Nobody else should _have_ to know about something so nightmarish, and he thinks he knows how to keep this hidden now. 

And he has no idea what the hell he could possibly have been thinking before, but clearly, he has absolutely nothing to tell Leah except that he can't tell her. After they got closer than ever before that night he first saw her again, he has to shut her out, and he can't stand it but can't help it, though he knows he _could have_ a little if he'd been thinking before and hadn't let himself fall into a such a moment of weakness.

And after she waits for an explanation and finally he can only tell her, "I'm so sorry, but you just have to trust me about this," the contained hurt he sees in her face quite clearly acknowledges that he is sorry about more than just the way he has to keep this from her. But he can't bring himself to _say_ he is sorry about that certain thing, that he came over to see her at all that night before he had a chance to figure anything out and led her to believe everything would eventually make sense. How can anyone possibly apologize for something like that? It's done. Maybe she said she didn't care how it happened, but there is also what happens afterwards which is a part of it, the way it changes everything afterwards, or at least the way it is _supposed_ to be different after.

Inevitably, she starts to harden a little around him, closing herself off in stinging little ways. He knows it is a more self-protective than angry or punitive reaction, because the thing is she _does_ trust him so completely and otherwise everything that night would not have happened and it would have occurred to her to expect more from him before letting everything pick up where it left off. He can see that deep down she knows there has to be a good reason for him having all these secrets and wants trust to be enough. But it can't be helped. He knows it was easier for her to accept being kept in the dark at the time, when he had so obviously just been through something horrible and wasn't simply just fine after all the time she had been worrying. But now, as time passes and everything cools and crystallizes after the emotional heat of the moment, it just begins to look more like he let her and his mother believe he was hurt or worse and it was obviously nothing, here he is.

He has gotten himself run into a complete dead end. If things were a little different, he could probably make up _something_ to account for where he was, where he keeps slipping away to sometimes now. It might not excuse his disappearance or make him look very good, but it could allow all of this to mostly go away after enough time. But he can't tell Leah it was anything normal and practically inconsequential, not after what happened afterwards. He starts to be tortured constantly by details of that night, the way her naked skin looked in the gentle glow of the light from the lamp with part of her in shadow and the way they were both just about splitting open with the effort it took to not make too much noise and how she was crying a little again when she came, and it makes him feel sick to his stomach to imagine the memory demolished in any way for her and what she might think now. Even though it isn't like he was the one who got it started, as he keeps thinking as he grabs desperately for anything. _Yeah right, you snuck into her fucking room in the middle of the night, what else could you have been thinking would happen, why else would you have said all that bullshit at first._

But at least for now, it is still natural for her to never assume the worst about him, which he's pretty sure makes her one of the only people who isn't doing just that. He knows what people have started saying about his mysterious long absence. It's hard to miss when he has vastly better hearing than a normal person now. The kindest idea he has heard from anyone is he must have let it get to his head that he'll be one of the only students in his class going on to college and just felt like getting away and skipping a couple whole weeks of his last days of high school. But with the way he is so completely aloof and unsociable around people now when before he was just known as reserved and quiet, it is easy for most people, if they think anything, to think other things. That it must be drugs or something like that if he is being so secretive about it. That he's obviously turning into a no-good loser like Levi...

No, they probably don't actually say that much. But he figures they might as well.

He would think that on top of everything else, this would be incredibly embarrassing for Leah as his girlfriend, but she seems to somehow completely ignore all the rumors and negative attention surrounding him at school and all around town now. And he thinks to himself that Ray Parks couldn't have been more wrong about what he heard him say to her once. She really _doesn't_ care what anybody thinks of her, or she just doesn't anymore.

Not every girl would stay with someone after something like this. And Leah is definitely not the type who never stands up for herself and will put up with a whole lot more than she should from somebody, so he knows it certainly isn't weakness. A lot of the time he thinks he has never felt closer to her or been more in love with her than now, when he can't even be with her the right way without some distance between them all the time.

 

Sam has a chance encounter with Old Quil Ateara, who is able to recognize almost right away what he is. He _understands_ what he is and what it means, and Sam is stunned and very lost until he tells him they'll have to meet with the other elders as soon as possible. So the _elders_ know. Everything finally starts to make some sense. Later in the Atearas' house, not bothering yet to get into the more eloquent explanations from the legends they just give him the short version in modern vernacular. Werewolf. _Vampire._ And he can't believe he is really listening to this stuff, but it does explain everything a lot more easily than anything else.

One of the first things he wants to know is "But why me?" It is said in the legends that their people are descended from wolves, but the elders didn't even know this had started again because out of everyone on the entire Quileute reservation it's just him. They explain that the transformation ability is only in certain bloodlines, direct descendants of the first wolf pack, and that it was passed to him by his father.

Of course. He can't help but think it, of course it always comes back to _him_ somehow. He left but the son of a bitch never goes away. And Sam has to wonder a little if it was somehow part of what he wanted to run away from, as hard as it is to believe. _So did you know about this, Lee?_ he thinks bitterly. _Did you know the legends were true and what that meant for you and any sons you had? Could you have helped me understand right from the start and helped me through this in a way Mom couldn't if you were here? If you cared?_

Billy Black asks him if he has told anyone, and Harry interjects. "Obviously you've kept it from your girlfriend all this time or I think I'd be able to tell," he says with a sympathetic smile. "Now that I know, I'm pretty astonished."

Sam shakes his head, answering wearily, "No. It's been a hard time with all my weird behavior but I haven't told Leah anything."

Billy looks to the side at Harry. "Your girl? He's her boyfriend?" When Harry nods, he shakes his head and mutters under his breath, " _Shit_ ," and Sam isn't sure why he seems to take that as bad news.

"And I didn't exactly tell my mom," he goes on, "but there was one time I started losing my temper and had to hurry out of the house to get somewhere dark, and she tried to follow me and I'm pretty sure she...saw me. Just for a second. She kind of let me have some space after that and stopped asking about what I'm going through, like she's waiting for me to be ready to talk about it with her."

They seem a little impressed with how Sam has managed to keep going to school most days and going through the motions of normalcy while dealing with this, especially without accidentally revealing it to anyone besides his mother. But they tell him for now he should probably be spending as much time as he can away from public places.

Then they tell him, at the end of a list of simple items of concern, that he has to break up with Leah.

"Sometime in the future you'll be able to worry about things like having a girlfriend again," says Old Quil when he sees Sam's expression in response to that. "But you can't ever tell her the truth. And it's too much right now to be spending time with her. Trust me, it is better for now to just let her go."

He stares at all of them a long moment, his eyes lingering on Harry who looks down sadly, and then asks dauntedly, "What am I supposed to tell her?"

"Anything. Anything to keep her away from you. If you want her safe, it's out of the question to keep seeing her."

"You just got done explaining to me that I'm not a monster! That this is all to _protect_ people, and now you're saying—"

"Yes, but you're still too new to this," Billy says. "You _can_ be dangerous as long as you haven't learned enough self-control yet. It takes time. Very bad things have happened before when protectors weren't careful. You don't want that to happen to her."

Harry seems to get the idea that Sam isn't quite grasping what they mean. "Haven't you ever seen what happens when you phase really close to a tree or something?" he asks.

Phase. Protector. Pack. They toss these words out so casually and familiarly it throws him off. Then he thinks about it and his expression starts to sink a little. "I guess I never really paid attention," he says quietly.

"Next time you're running around phased late at night," Quil says, "I suggest you find yourself a car or a metal swing set or something you can test your claws on and see for yourself what kind of damage you can do. And then try to imagine if it were a person instead."

"Jesus, man," Harry says, cringing a little. "I think the kid gets the picture."

"Probably not a bad idea, though," Billy says, looking back at Sam. "Just make sure it isn't _my_ car."

Sam lets out a heavy, frustrated breath. "Listen...I really think I have a pretty good handle on this by now, and I'm getting better every day. So far it means half the time I'm at school I've got tunnel vision concentrating on not getting worked up at all, but it's working. I've still been seeing Leah this whole time and it's been fine."

"Well, not exactly," Harry speaks up, looking pained to have to say it. "I'm sorry, son, I sure as hell wish it weren't you. But I happen to be able to tell it hasn't been the best relationship lately, and I know that's not your fault, but...maybe it would be safer _and_ better overall for her if you could just let her be."

"No," Sam desperately responds right away; looking harshly beaten down just by the thought of it, he starts appealing directly to Harry. "I _know_ that isn't true. It's still...Leah and I...it's serious. I can't just...You know she's like family to me, Harry. If my _mother_ can know, why do I have to give her up? I could stay away from her if I really have to, for as long as I have to, but what would be _better_ for her is if she could actually understand why."

"Who are you to say that? You aren't even thinking about what you're suggesting. How do you think you'd go about telling her something like this? Wouldn't you rather let her have a safe and normal life than have her brought into what you're in?"

Sam starts looking even more distressed by his words, but he counters, "You said yourself you're part of the bloodline, that now that this is starting again it's possible your _son_ could be like me eventually. What kind of options for a normal life does she really have?"

" _You_ have the option of doing the right thing as long as it's still a choice," Quil says, starting to sound a little stern. "Now, I know you didn't choose this, and right now it must seem like nothing but a just plain lousy destiny to have thrown on you and it's hard, but I'd be grateful that you at least have _that_ as a choice."

"Most likely you won't be the only one for long," Billy adds, "and the others will be expected to make the same sacrifices. We must protect our secrets as much as possible, without making arbitrary exceptions. We have to ask you to respect that."

He sighs, caving a little under all their words, and then for a moment he can no longer meet eyes directly with any of them. Those much older and so knowledgeable eyes on him, they all make him feel like just a dumb kid again even after all he has experienced now. "Sorry...I don't mean to be disrespectful," he says in a low but sincere voice. "I know you're all trying to help me. You _are_ helping..."

Harry comes around to where he is sitting and puts a firm, comforting hand on his shoulder. "Man, it has to have been rough for you," he says heavily, "being the first."

The other two elders meet eyes with him. "Who do you suppose could be next?" Billy asks.

Harry thinks a moment. "You know as your only son, Jacob would be the natural Alpha in a new pack," he says, addressing it with some delicacy. "His ability will be the most potent and viable."

"Yes," Billy says a little gravely. "But he's not nearly old enough yet."

"Yeah. Until that happens, it's just down to you," Harry says, glancing down at Sam.

"I'm gonna be...the Alpha?" he says, a little dazed and overwhelmed as the word feels strange on his own tongue.

Harry just smirks.

"But... _I_ don't fucking know how you lead a pack of werewolves!" he says in a frustrated outburst before he can help himself.

Some of them just laugh lightly at that. Then, going back to the question they were addressing before, Harry says, "Of course it isn't known to be an exact science as far as when they develop, but the Walkers' boy would be the oldest of the possible candidates with the gene so he's probably our best guess for who to keep an eye on."

That grabs Sam's attention back to the subject, and he looks up at him quickly. " _Paul Walker?_ "

"That's the one."

Eyes big with shock, he shakes his head as he tries to take all of this in. "Shouldn't we be talking to these other guys or something? Isn't there some way we can help them so they have an idea of what to expect like I didn't?"

"They'll be okay," Billy says. "Well, as much as they can be, with a thing like this. Like Harry says, it was real bad for you, but at least they won't be going into it alone."

"But how will we _know_ when it happens to somebody else? You didn't find me for weeks."

"Oh, don't worry about that," Old Quil just says with a cryptic smile. "Believe me. You'll know."

 

The next morning Sam finds Leah walking to school and catches up to her. As he comes to her side, he notices that she looks a little weighed down somehow before he says, "Hey."

She looks up at him, makes a weak attempt at a smile and says quietly, "Hi."

"You alright?" he asks, lifting a hand to her back, and then they both start to slow down.

Frowning deeply, she lets out a long and weary breath and then turns to him as they both stop. "I got into a big fight with my dad last night," she explains, not looking directly into his eyes and sounding embarrassed to say it. "He wants me to stop seeing you."

Sam goes very still. Even though he knows not to take it personally and probably should have expected this, it is still a bit of a blow. He hasn't even been thinking much yet about what the elders told him he has to do, and he realizes now it's because he already made up his mind not to listen and that was a much too troubling decision to face sooner than later. But no matter how much he hates to go against Harry's wishes as an elder and as her father, not to mention put her at risk without her knowing it even if it's a risk she would probably accept, he knows as much as he could weigh the consequences of either choice there is a part of him that is fixed too firmly in the present position to budge. After a while last night he was so overwhelmed he could only sit stunned in that chair at the Ateara place nodding and saying "Yes" to everything because there was nothing else to do, but saying it and actually looking her in the eye and doing it are different things. It's almost like they might as well have asked him to put a bullet in her chest, or if that isn't dramatic enough, in his own. Is he just some stupid teenager who thinks he and his pain are special enough to deserve to be excused from the way the world is? He can't seem to care. Maybe he should get to keep _some_ kind of innocence, and he knows some things are worth risking everything and just trusting himself. That's just about all he knows anymore.

After they start walking again, Leah goes into a slight tirade angrily explaining how it went, giving unsurprising details about how Harry obviously used the questionable reputation Sam has been gaining after going missing and the way it's affecting her as his reason, and he just listens in a daunted silence. When she is done recounting it she crosses her arms, shaking her head in a pause of silent frustration, and then when she looks up at Sam her anger is suddenly directed at him a little.

"Don't you have anything to say?" she says.

He slowly shakes his head to express his bewilderment. "What _can_ I say? He's your dad."

"Yeah, okay," she says flatly. "So maybe if he just decided now that I'm not allowed to date at all, it would suck but at least be something I can begin to accept he has a right to do. But who the hell thinks they can just pick their daughter's boyfriends for her based on their own limited judgment? You know, unless it's like she could be in actual _physical danger_ from somebody, otherwise that's insane."

Sam has to look away from her for a moment, innerly cringing at her choice of words, and his spirits start sinking even more deeply. What is wrong with him? What is he thinking? He isn't a person who does this. Maybe he _is_ turning into a monster...

"Aren't you going to stand up for yourself at all here?" she demands then in a tired tone, looking closely at his glum face. "Do you _want_ me to listen to him?"

"No!" he replies right away, and his previous thoughts almost completely disintegrate with the present concern. "Why would you think that?"

She frowns, looking down at her feet for a while. "It's just...you're always like this," she says disconcertedly. "You always act like it's natural somehow for people to think badly of you, as if there's any good reason for that. I can't believe you don't even seem that surprised that my _dad_ suddenly buys the kind of crap some people are saying about you and would actually think you don't care about me!"

"I don't know, Leah, he..." Sam sighs. "It's just hard for me to have anything against Harry, you know? You're right, this really isn't what I'd expect from him. So I'm sure he must have his own good reasons for thinking this is what he has to do. I can't really blame him for _caring_."

Something in her face softens a little, even as she keeps looking sullen, and she closes her eyes a second as she shakes her head again. "Right," she says relentingly with an empty smile, obviously trying to lighten up a little. "I guess I'm just being kind of a brat, expecting you to pitch a fit with me when _you_ know I'm lucky I've got a dad who actually cares enough to still be here at all."

He comes to a stop again, looking a little abashed with his mouth dropping open slightly, and then says, "Oh no, Leah—that's not what I meant to—"

She holds a hand up to stop his words, shaking her head and waving it away, and then just starts to look resigned and sad. "Oh, Sam," she says in a sigh, leaning into him and bringing one arm around him. "You don't even know how good a person you are."

He blinks slowly as he fights the dark thoughts making a pit in his stomach again. "Don't be ridiculous," he mutters, trying to sound a little joking about it, as he brings his arms around her shoulders.

"I'm serious. You can make me feel so lazy and narcissistic and just plain selfish by comparison. Have I ever told you that?"

"...No."

"Well, I don't need to know every single thing that's in your head to be able to say that." She pulls away from him a little and looks up directly at his face. "I just wish I understood what it is about yourself you seem so afraid of sometimes."

Her focused and unbreaking gaze is breaching him, dissolving his defenses, and he starts breathing a little uneasily and isn't sure if it's enough that she can see how nervous he is just about admitting this much.

"I'm afraid of hurting you more than anything," he says softly, and he realizes all at once how many seemingly endless different ways it is true now.

As Leah stares, her expression becomes less piercing and strong, wavering in its constant hold as she shifts and moves like she's uncomfortable, rearranging her feet a little and looking down for a brief split second.

"I know that doesn't make much sense because... _why_ then can't I just not do it?" he says, his eyes full of the conflicted frustration. "But that was always true, since long before I ever actually did anything to mess things up. And...I don't know why. It's like I'm just not meant to have anything good and I always knew it."

"That's ridiculous," she says, shaking her head quickly. "You know, _everybody_ messes up sometimes or has to be selfish at some point in their life. I can deal with that. Even if I imagine the very worst that seems remotely possible about whatever it is you think you have to hide from me, it's hard to imagine I couldn't live with it. But I need you to at least act like you _believe_ we can make this work, even if it means we have to lie and see each other in secret from now on. Because sometimes it's like you're only half with me while another part of you is trying everything to convince me I should get away from you, and I can't stand it."

His face starts to look pained and he just holds onto her shoulders tightly as he looks down at her. Then he can only say sadly, "Okay. I'm sorry. I don't mean to..."

She just gives a short shake of her head and says, "Just kiss me."

So he leans over and does it without waiting a second, forcing his worries and indecisiveness to wash away for now so he can be all here, just with her, with nothing else in the periphery of his mind, if it is possible. It quickly turns into an intense kind of kiss that does not usually happen outside in broad daylight early in the morning, with both of them eagerly pulling each other as close as possible and breathing very audibly. He knows this is not everything, this does not make everything fixed and okay, but if he can't at least show how much he still wants to be here when he kisses her then everything else is hopeless.

 

Sam knows he is being selfish and reckless by staying with Leah and it eats away at him all the time, but he can't let go of her now. He had to turn down his college scholarship now that leaving home is out of the question, and he still hasn't quite figured out what he's going to tell her or anyone else about that. Most of his friends will still talk to him when they see him at school, but none of them bother trying to get together with him anymore and it's probably for the best. He has lost his job after failing to explain all his absences. It seems like the only important thing in his life he has managed to hold onto through all this is Leah.

But it is a slippery and loose grip. He can always feel the thread between them straining. Even though she is trying to accept that he is clearly keeping something from her, he can see that it's still hurting her. He can't go too long without phasing or it only makes it easier for him to lose it and do it unintentionally, and it has gotten to the point that he can never really make her promises about when he'll be there for her. He feels like he has to see her to stay even somewhat calm and sane and this is one reason he can't even imagine giving her up now, but he also can't stand the thought of letting her be around when he could hurt her, and some days he just isn't in any state to completely trust his self-control.

Sometimes he thinks of the last day they spent together before everything went so bad, when before they got soaked in rain they were sitting in the car just listening to the heavy sound of it along with the mellow Red Hot Chili Peppers song playing on the radio, and it was like they could hear each other's thoughts as they stayed mostly in a peaceful silence not speaking much or even kissing but just being together. The perfect day that ended too soon and should have been the first time they made love. The memory literally burns him to think about like some cruel punishment, in some ways much worse than the memory of when they finally did go that far, and he wonders if they will ever be able to return to having that kind of complete trust and closeness they could feel between them that day.

 

One night when he comes to her window and taps lightly on the glass, as he does somewhat regularly now, she looks quite tired like she was just starting to fall asleep. But she goes to the front door to let him in as usual and waits until they have both crept back to her room together before she says anything.

"This secret midnight rendezvous thing isn't as romantic and fun as you'd think it would be after a while," she whispers tiredly, but the words are not accusatory. He is a little relieved and encouraged to hear her say something in an attempt to make light of the situation.

"I don't have to stay long," he says apologetically as they sit down on the end of her bed. "I was awake so I just thought I might as well see if you were up...I missed you."

The painfully swelling sincerity in his voice makes her smile at him for a second. Then she shakes her head, her face filling with the complete bewilderment that has become very familiar to see in her eyes when she looks at him, and she reaches out and smoothes her hand down his arm. "It seems like half the time I'm able to see you now it's when you show up here late at night," she says. "Don't you get much sleep anymore?"

He swallows heavily, not because he can't tell her how he doesn't have to sleep as much as other people, but because what he is going to tell her is true. "Actually...when I try to these days, it doesn't always work out so well."

"You can't sleep?"

"I _can_ but...I get a lot of these really freaky dreams now. They wake me up. And then they just really...stay with me. I can't relax."

She starts to look concerned. "Freaky how? What would you be having nightmares that bad about?"

"Oh, it's just..." He shakes his head, trying to brush it off like it's unimportant. "It's nothing. They're just weird, random dreams."

He sees the deep disappointment creeping into her features as she can clearly tell he's pretending, just locking her out as usual. It is always like a punch to the gut when he is obviously hurting her like this in small but constant ways.

_Screw it,_ he thinks. If it's one thing he can actually share with her...

"They're about my father," he says softly, looking down at the bed sheets as he is somehow unable to meet her eyes while saying it. "I'm always...fighting and killing him."

Leah's eyes slowly go wide. "You're having dreams about killing your father?" she says, sounding a little breathless and horrified. "Like...vivid, scary ones? That sounds _horrible_."

He shakes his head, trying to put on a good show of confusion, as she brings both her hands to his. "I don't understand why something like this would be bothering me now."

Something makes her suddenly frown a little after his words—perhaps a realization that she can possibly imagine a reason. But she still looks sympathetic and worried, stroking both his hands with her thumbs as she holds them. Then she starts scooting back on the bed and pats the spot next to her, inviting him to lie there next to her as she relaxes across the bed on her side. After he follows, she snuggles up close to him under his arm that he wraps around her, draping one arm around his waist.

"I hate seeing you like this," she says. "You always seem so strung out now."

Sam sighs a little, somehow uncomfortable about the turn this is taking, and shakes his head at himself. "I didn't come here to make you feel sorry for me, you know," he says. He realizes the full meaning of the statement only after it's out, and adds hesitantly in a much heavier tone, "I...I never come to you meaning to do that."

Leah sounds very calm in her reply. "I'm your girlfriend," she says. "I'm supposed to feel bad for you. You're _supposed_ to talk to me about these things...Maybe you've been making it pretty hard for me sometimes, but you also beat yourself up pretty bad, you know. I can see that. All you do is keep feeling sorry about everything all the time. But if you really still want me, you can't just stop coming to me at all. You can't completely protect me from everything you're going through."

He looks closely at her face. "I do still want you. Just so you know. I don't have nearly enough of you yet."

She shakes with a very small, silent laugh, the corners of her lips turning up just barely.

Now Sam is looking at her like he is thinking more about it after saying it, and the rest of his words come out like he is speaking partially to himself. "I think I'd spend every waking hour of every day with you if I could...and if you'd let me."

The look on her face becomes very gentle, and then also serious again. "I know you're sorry about coming to me that night," she says quietly. "After you came back...But I'm not sorry about that."

In the way the words sound, he can easily hear the rest even if she won't say it: _Not yet._ But it still means something to hear it. Maybe the way it felt when they were together that night is actually one thing that has kept her from giving up on him by now. Maybe she trusts her instincts in believing that _that_ was genuine and as meaningful as it seemed at the time and everything that started coming between them afterwards has been the only secrets and lies.

"And I'd do it again," she adds. "Otherwise, why would I still be with you? It's not because I feel sorry for you or something like that, so you better know that."

Sam just slowly nods.

She lets out a long sigh, closing her eyes for a moment. "I don't care what happened to you," she whispers, a hard edge of desperation in her words even as they're so soft and she sounds so tired. "I don't care what you're doing or where you are when you disappear for so long. I wish you could trust that you can tell me, but I know I can trust you. I know it isn't for nothing that I love you so much..."

Closing his eyes tightly in a pained way, he turns his head down to kiss her forehead.

Then Leah opens her eyes, looks right up at his face. "I don't care what it is," she says. "I just need to know that I still come first."

The guilt rips him apart all over again as he takes in her words. If only she knew. The only reason he is here at all right now is because she does come first. She shouldn't, she really can't, but he's cheating. He can't do the really hard thing. But in this moment as he looks at her, he finally believes more than ever that it will have to pay off eventually. It is as if without knowing it, she is telling him not to give up.

"You always come first, Lee-lee," he says quietly into her ear. "You're one of the only good things I've got. I love you. And I promise none of this—not anything at all—is ever going to change how I feel about you."

She closes her eyes again, seeming assured as she holds him a little tighter.

"And things might still be pretty complicated for a while, especially with us hiding this from your parents now," he says. "So maybe they'll never be exactly the way they were before, but things are only going to get better from now on. I'm sure of it."

And he is. It is much easier to imagine getting used to this life now that the elders have taught him so much about what to expect and how many others have lived this way before. It won't always be necessary for him to be isolating himself from people as much as he can. After a while he'll have enough control over the wolf to maintain the right balance between his normal life and this secret responsibility, and if he and Leah can keep their relationship out of the open just until that time then Harry and the other elders can't have any objection to him reconnecting with her then. Until recently it felt like he was only getting closer and closer to ruining everything he had, but now he can clearly see that it won't be this hard forever. Not at all.

Leah slides her arm up from his waist and raises her hand near his face, twirling some of his hair that is grown almost past his neck around her finger. It reminds him that he has been meaning to get it cut—he's been wanting to test a theory about how it might make a difference when he phases and allow him to move through the trees more quietly when he has to stay hidden. Of course he can't tell Leah this, but maybe some time soon he'll have to ask if she wouldn't mind cutting it for him. She has given him haircuts before; she's pretty good at it and might like to work in a hair salon some day if it ever looks possible to put herself through beauty school. It seems like they hardly ever talk about mundane everyday things like this anymore, and they especially never seem to talk about _her_ , but he knows these kinds of things about her. He likes to remember it now and think that even with the messed up things he has seen and been through now, she can keep him grounded in the normal world where everything is neat and sane and hairdryers come in boxes with warnings on them and wolves are there as warnings in fairy tales but all the real harm never seems near.

Yes, he would like spending an afternoon feeling her fingers gently handling his wet hair and hearing the scissors snip pleasantly like he remembers it was when she did that in his bathroom before, not thinking about the loneliness of wandering the forest at night and the Cullens' devastating presence here like an infestation of the supernatural that spreads and destroys. And maybe it will ultimately be better if it is always like this and he never has to try to tell her anything. He doesn't want her to change any more than he may have already changed her.

He does not realize how much his thoughts have drifted away until she suddenly opens her eyes and takes a deep, exhausted breath, seeming to pull herself out of her inattention, and then looks up at his face. "I'm glad you came," she says. "I'm sorry I'm falling asleep..."

He shakes his head and says, "It's okay. Go ahead and sleep. I promise I won't pass out here by accident."

She smiles as he turns his head down to kiss her softly. "I wish you could just stay here," she says as her last tired and barely audible words, closing her eyes again. "Maybe then you wouldn't have nightmares..."

The thought clutches tightly around his chest, making him look at her sadly. As he watches her relax and start to slip away into sleep, a part of him prays silently for something out there that causes such impossible and remarkable things like what has happened to him to come through and somehow let things be okay for them, to rearrange the way the world is if it has to, to just give him a break. He can accept what he is now, the burden it gives him, and everything it means he has to do if he can just have a life on top of it. If he can just have something good as relief from it all and be able to sleep easily again.

What he can't tell Leah about why he has trouble sleeping well is that in these dreams he is the wolf, and his father is a wolf, too. They are both gigantic and black-coated, almost indistinguishable, but Sam is larger and stronger than the other. He is larger, but he is still always terrified to fight him, part of him wanting so much to run away because his fear of the other wolf is so overpowering. But when his father attacks and the fight starts, it is so fierce and ravaging that there is no running, he has to fight back, and to the death. By the end he lets the animal completely loose, like he has forgotten himself, because that is what he has to do to be on equal ground with the other. His teeth tear at their own will and they have to go for the throat because they can heal too fast for anything else to do enough damage, and he's ripping ripping and their blood covers the ground all over and blends together, the same, until by the time he's won he might have bled more than the other in the struggle and he can't even tell.

He has to do this to protect everything he loves from himself. But when he wakes up there is a terrible lingering feeling like he has cut away some part of himself that he is lost and forgotten without. No matter what the reason, the struggle is a wrenching and twisting pain in his insides, as if it would be easier and so much less painful to lie down and let himself be torn apart and defeated. To let go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now Emily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This can happen, the elders explain to him. A supposedly rare phenomenon for his kind to experience when they meet someone for the first time after making the change. They tell him about the parts of some their legends which describe protectors of former generations having the same thing happen to them. Finding the same thing. _Her._

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn't know how he can ever explain to Leah and make her understand. _He_ doesn’t really understand. And worst of all, Emily can’t either. She looks at him in complete shock like he disgusts her, like it amazes her that her no-fool cousin trusts and loves this man so much, and says, “You don’t even know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

He can't possibly explain how that has nothing to do with it. To him, Emily is not her favorite color or whether or not she believes in the afterlife or what she likes to do when she has nothing to do or what words she tends to use a lot in conversation. Emily is not a person. She is a life. She is a vast continent. She holds the entire ocean of understanding in her arms. Her voice permits time. The angles and curves and contours of her body are shapes molded to support existence, the planes and valleys and mountains of the earth he walks on.

To him she is not beautiful so much as she is beauty itself. Everything from now on will only ever be beautiful in the ways its proportions can be likened to her. Then all the sudden, as if it completes this entire otherworldly change of his life, he has snapped out from the inside of himself and hurt the only thing in the universe he would have thought could never be made less perfect. She will have gruesome scars for the rest of her life on one side of her body. The dark and light side of the moon. Of course this would happen because even the ultimate love is not just about the good. Now everything can only be truly ugly in the ways it looks like her, too. 

In this way she is everywhere, and even if he were capable of wanting to get away she would always be inescapably with him. Stunning sunsets ignited with the bright colors of orange fire and purple veins of blood are Emily. Rotting dead animals on the side of the road are Emily. Every happy, bright memory he has from his childhood is Emily. Addicts with sunken eyes full of the nothingness of needing only the bottle or the needle are Emily. The warm safety of the womb and the painful and stripping descent from innocence are both Emily.

Even Leah is Emily. The door into this world has been following him everywhere his whole life, hiding in the corner of his eye as he gazes at the face of who they will now just call his high school sweetheart, his _first_ love, the beautiful girl with the sharp knowing smile that will now be meant for no one if it was ever really there at all. Now everything that was hidden before behind this elusive door has all spilled out in an instant and rearranged all the maps, and the only directions he can find his way going are ones leading to her.

It doesn’t make any sense. His whole life does not make sense anymore if it is not her.

 

After it happens, after Emily is in the hospital and he knows he won't be able to stay away forever but can't stand to be there any longer for now, he gets in his car and drives for a long time. He isn't sure what gradually pulls him with a slow lack of effort and energy to her house of all places, and if he was in any kind of state to have better judgment he would know this is a terrible idea. But after all, it's the worst kind of punishment he can possibly imagine, when he can hardly stand to look at her face anymore after what he has done—to see Leah. This is already the worst night of his life, so it feels like anything else he does right now cannot matter at all and might as well not be real.

It is Seth who answers the door, looking surprised to see him but not exactly in a negative way. Leave it to this kid to be one of the only people who seems to be reserving any judgment about him now.

"Hey, Sam," he says, and then starts to look concerned. "Has something happened?"

It must be written all over his face. Everything has happened. The world ended and he's the only one who feels it. He just shuffles his feet around awkwardly, finding himself speechless, like he suddenly isn't even sure why he is here. He very nearly turns around to leave.

But then he hears Leah talking to Seth as she follows him to the door. "Who is it?"

She comes into view behind him and stops, seeing Sam. At the sight of him, the profound vulnerability settles into her face for just a second before she then just seems to harden all over, her expression going stoic and blank. Seth gets the idea very easily that he should get out of the way and leaves them to go into the kitchen. Leah slowly comes forward to the door and looks at him, hesitates a moment after touching the doorknob and looks back toward the kitchen in brief thought, and then resolves to join him outside on the doorstep and closes the door behind her.

She draws her arms around herself, crossing them in a seemingly self-guarding kind of position. She is dressed for bed—What time is it now?—and her arms are bare, her hair down loose around her shoulders, the neckline of her shirt sinking in a deep V that would draw someone else's eyes downward for a couple seconds, he supposes. He can remember, if he thinks about it, how sometimes just looking at her could make him feel warm all over and like something was gently prickling every inch of his skin, that he used to not be able to see her smile without wanting to touch her. His mind and heart may be so distanced from her now in a way he would have thought impossible to change in one fateful moment, but it seems like at least his body should remember hers. He should feel some reflexive and conditioned physical reaction to the proximity to her. It was _him_ joined with her once that night that can never be taken back, them coming together as closely as it is possible for two to be, but now it might as well be that he never knew her that way. She could be any woman, or more like any _person_ at all who he knows well and cares for. That is how it is now: there is Emily, and then there is everyone else. Women as a collective and their varying shapes and hues and ways of moving that he used to watch attentively have all dissolved from his awareness.

He doesn't know why he is practically searching for any kind of remaining trace in him of the attraction and feelings he had for her before. If his path has finally started to make so much more sense ever since he found Emily, he doesn't know why it can still be a little unsettling to realize whenever he sees her now how something that was so much a part of him could just get cut away with no lasting effect. He knows that just weeks ago she was everything but can no longer _feel_ that she was like it was just something he experienced passively through someone else. Maybe he just can't seem to live with the injustice as long as he feels guilt but absolutely no real pain and sense of loss over the sudden separation that she will have an unimaginably hard time getting over.

"Hey," she says. "What was that about earlier?"

"What?" he asks, his mind working slowly.

"Apparently that was you on the phone asking for my dad?" she says. "He talked to you and then he took my mom aside to tell her something really quick and they rushed out of here like it was some kind of emergency."

So she found out it was him who called. Harry was the only person he could think to contact after it happened, and she must have overheard something about who was on the phone after Sue answered. He doesn't think he could stand to actually say the name Emily right now to begin to tell her what it was about, even vaguely. Soon enough she will find out anyway, though all she will hear is that she was attacked by a bear.

"Uh...yeah, there was a situation," he says, looking down at his feet. "He can explain. He got it under control."

Leah starts looking very closely at him, so distracted by what she sees that she doesn't demand any more of an answer, and then she shakes her head with a look of slight shock. "My God. You look fucking terrible."

Her concern is unbearable. It still comes naturally to her to be worried about him despite how he hurt her, all the promises to her he broke, how easily he suddenly gave up on them. This is not what he came here for. Not for her concern. The coldness and complete disconnection he feels with her compared to what he used to feel for her is just making him feel even more abandoned and lonely, with nothing to reach for.

"It's not your mom, is it?" she asks, looking for some answer to why he would look so destroyed by whatever he's just been through. "Nothing's happened to her?"

He frowns, shaking his head. "No, it's nothing like that."

Leah sighs a little. "Well...I guess you have the right to keep your secrets now," she says, obviously trying to sound a little cold and dismissing, but the deep sadness comes through in her voice anyway.

He looks at her with overwhelming sorrow, for as long as he can stand to look directly at her. He practically has an aversion to the sight of her now; it is like looking at himself in a mirror, having to examine the ugliest and most shameful parts of himself much too closely and clearly.

"What do you want, Sam?" she asks, finally trying to make him get to the point. Even now the way she speaks to him is not cruel or angry, just confused.

"I want..." He makes himself look at her, taking in a deep breath. "I want you to stop trying to be so tough."

"What?" she asks, not understanding. Or pretending to not understand.

"For the love of God, stop acting like you don't feel unforgivably hurt and betrayed over all this," he says, and with that the words start reaching her and she is now the one who has to look away. "You don't even act like you're _mad_. You're trying so hard to be understanding and...but you _can't_ be! What I've done... _Nobody_ does that! And you're just doing everything to put on this show and make it as easy for me as possible, and I don't get it!"

"What do you want me to do?" she says, softly but in a very fast outburst as she looks right up at him. "No matter how unfair it is—I _love_ Em. I love her, and you made a point of making it very clear that whether or not you have any kind of a chance with her, everything between you and me is over. So there's obviously no point in getting in the way, if she does actually want...if she's just pretending for my sake to be way too angry over what you've done to me to even consider it. What else can I do but try not to rub it in how hard this is for me so I won't make her feel too guilty?"

"Well, she isn't here now," Sam says. "It's just me."

"So?"

"So what do I want you to do? I want you to _get pissed at me_. I want you to yell at me, say what you really think of me now. _Hit me_ for all I care. I deserve it. I don't deserve for you to sit by and watch while I pursue _your cousin_ because you don't want to make it hard for anybody else. Stop letting me off so easy!"

Her eyes just start to fill with a helplessly lucid sadness as she looks closely at him, and she slowly shakes her head. "I don't want to hit you," she says in a very weak, defeated kind of voice. "And I don't want to yell at you...I want you to be happy. With _me_ , but obviously it can't happen that way, so...I can't make it hard for you, either."

Sam's posture sinks hopelessly, his breath falling out heavily. He should have known this was all he would find if he came here. He wasn't thinking at all.

Leah's lips tighten as her eyes start tearing up almost unnoticeably. "Maybe it would be easier if I could just hate you and be really angry. And maybe for a long time now it's felt sometimes like I hardly know you anymore...But I do know you. And this...it's not something you do. It's not the kind of thing you'd ever do without a good reason, even if I don't understand it. And I know for a while now you've been through a lot. You've been in pain over... _something_ , and I know it's definitely not like I've been the only one suffering. But the times I've seen you and Emily together, it seems like there's something there I can't even explain. Just when you _look_ at her, it's like all of that suddenly just floats away and you look like a whole new and completely healed person. And it makes me feel so small. And that's how I know...I just have to let you go. That's why it's so hard to be angry..."

Her voice has started cracking a little, and she crosses her arms again, drawing herself in tight the way she does sometimes when she tries not to get too outwardly emotional. He turns to the side, standing with his back to the door, and says, "I'm sorry." How many times now has he had to tell her sorry? "I shouldn't have come here, it was stupid and selfish and...God, I keep telling myself I'm done hurting you, and then I can't seem to stop being horrible to you and making everything worse."

She shakes her head, starting to look a little more put together again. "No...You haven't been horrible. Not really. People do much worse. I know you don't mean to be this way."

He knows what she is thinking is how that's all part of what makes it so hard, that everything they had hasn't been made to mean nothing because he isn't just some complete bastard but is still the same person she's always loved deep down. But she is trying to make _him_ feel better in whatever way she can. He has to get away from her understanding, her sympathy. Now. She doesn't even know what he did to her cousin tonight, it's so misdirected, she has no idea.

"Listen, I promise, I'm going to leave you alone from now on," he says firmly. "You'll be able to get away from me after this and I won't keep showing up and making it hard again."

Something about those words makes the hurt start showing nakedly in her face all over again. "Like I said, I'm pretty sure you never _mean_ to do these things," she says, her voice now sounding dull, "but just...try to keep something in mind every time you make me another promise? I'll probably always believe you."

He can't look at her again before she turns to go inside. As he heads slowly back to his car with his head hanging, his ears pick up everything happening inside the house behind him. Seth says Leah's name in a worried voice as her slightly rushed footsteps carry her to her room, where she shuts herself in, and then he can hear her breathing getting tight and uneven as she starts crying softly.

When he's in his car and starts driving away, through the silence in his head it takes a while for his attention to become attuned to the quiet music on the radio. But soon he realizes the song playing now is "Under the Bridge." And it should feel cruelly and ironically meaningful in a moment like this, bringing the associated memories into sharp detail with a wistful or at least regretful pang. But in response to it, he just feels nothing. He is emptied and detached, left adrift and with nowhere to go, like the lonely soul of something that was never born at all.

For one unbearably long and wretched night, there is nothing. His love for Leah is lost, and Emily will never love him now. There is no beauty or ugliness, no darkness or light, no moon at all, no push and pull keeping the sea in motion. No center of gravity.

There is no Sam Uley. That seventeen-year-old boy who talked quietly and smiled only a little when she sat next to him in the gym one day has been dead a while now.

 

He finds out the extent of his sins the next day. Besides the huge gashes on her arm and face, Emily has a broken rib and clavicle. For a long time she seems to still be in complete shock, he hears, but then after a while he hears that she's started asking about him a lot and wants to see him. At last there is some small glimmer of hope for him to follow again.

And then everything finally comes together the way all the pieces are meant to fit. It is almost anti-climactic how easily and naturally things settle into place, with little feeling of great change, like he and Emily together is something that has simply always been and just had to be uncovered. After she kisses him the first time, he closes his eyes and slowly sinks into her, laying his head down in her lap with his arms wrapped around her as he just says her name in an exhausted sigh of finality. Her name on his lips will always feel like surrender, like finding himself at rest inside a home that is somehow bright despite having no windows or doors. And as he rests at last with her, it is like the world all around him goes completely motionless, never to resume.

Several weeks later, Emily cuts his hair for him. She is as good at doing it as Leah, if not better, and Sam has a feeling somehow that she taught Leah half of everything she knows about things like giving haircuts and cooking. He is learning quickly that Emily is one of those remarkable kinds of people who seems to know how to do everything. Get stains out of shirts better than anyone, bake better than anyone, make a tourniquet, cut the meat from a freshly dead rabbit, make him able to sleep when he's restless by giving him the right kind of tea. Or maybe she only seems remarkable in that way to him. He could probably never be sure.

As the scissors quietly _snip snip snip_ in her hands, the dark pieces of his hair fall to the white bathroom floor around his feet like useless old pieces of himself being shed in some kind of rebirth. When he looks at the mirror afterwards, he barely recognizes himself.

 

He has the dream of the two wolves again, and it is worse than ever before because this time he finally understands it.

The black wolves look almost the same because they are _both_ him. Levi Uley left a long time ago. He is not here. It is just him, all alone in the dark and endless woods and fighting himself. One of the wolves, he thinks, may be the more selfish part of him, the irresponsible one. The other would be his half that has some greater destiny to meet. They are choice and fate, good and bad, right and wrong.

But he doesn't know which one is which. Which is the stronger one. Whether it is the right one or the wrong one that is winning anymore. It seems like he understands which wolf is _him_ , in the life he is living now, in the dream, but as soon as he wakes up with Emily's slow breathing in the dark next to him the understanding slips away and is forgotten.

He doesn't know which side of himself has won, if either. When he imprinted, he stopped fighting. He submitted and was instantly relieved of the entire struggle. Who does that mean he is now?

Most of the time, when he is in Emily's presence and everything feels perfect and right, it is easy not to think about it. In some ways maybe he cannot afford to think about it. He cannot reconcile what he has now and what he has done. It was all too easy, falling down and letting himself be overcome. She is his ultimate destiny that has always been written in his blood, passed to him through his ancestry and always waiting dormant to claim him one day, and there is no running from that. Leah is collapsed on the kitchen floor, abandoned forever. This part of himself can't be fought, it has nothing to do with the kind of person he is or how he was raised, it's just what he is made of, it just is. And everything that came before it in his life means nothing.

But what becomes of the smaller, weaker wolf? Is he really just left dead?

It wasn't him who killed that, he tells himself. He needs to hate something besides himself sometimes. After a while whenever he phases, the fiery determination that allows him to make the change so easily at will is the controlled but always strong hatred that he has grown used to, a burning hot coal he always carries. And sometimes he doesn't know what he would do if he was ever to meet one of the Cullens face-to-face.

Sometimes he thinks of what Old Quil Ateara said to him once about destiny and how he should have been grateful as long as he still had a choice when it came to Leah, as if he should have been happy that he could break her heart to keep her safe from him. He broke her heart anyway, but maybe there is some denied resolution in not being able to completely own one's mistakes. Sometimes Sam is sure that he must have been warning him in his own subtle way that all of this could happen with that strange piece of wisdom, and sometimes he thinks he's just imagining that the words had any intentional connection to that possibility. After a while it just makes his head hurt too much to consider it, and what he can never stand to think about are his words "the choice to do the right thing." He knows when there is no choice there is no right or wrong at all and that's terrifying, because he will never know himself enough anymore to be sure if he could have chosen to do the right thing.

He can't think about this much at all before his mind seems to shrivel away from it like he is literally incapable of caring too much, but sometimes in his dreams his mind seems more free, and also in a way more weighed down. It explores the dark unknown sockets of his life without knowing what it is doing, and so even someone who has imprinted can sometimes still have nightmares.

 

On one of his last days of school before graduation, Sam spots Ray Parks in one of the halls with another student who looks no older than fourteen and is slipping some money into his hand while Ray discreetly passes him a small bag of something. After they part ways, Sam watches Ray for a moment with a frown and then follows him around a corner. As soon as he catches up to him, he grabs him and slams him against some lockers so hard that it gets the attention of everyone within view, pinning him in place with his hand grabbing hold of the neck of his shirt.

"What the hell, Uley?" Ray says, and it's obvious he is pretending not to already be a little scared. It's all too easy for Sam to intimidate people now if he really wants to.

By now he has trained himself to stay as calm as he can all the time, and besides that he has much bigger problems than some sophomore loser who has no idea how lucky he is to be safe from things living on the other side of the treaty line that shouldn't exist, so he looks and sounds completely self-possessed and at ease, not out of control with anger at all. "We want this to be a nice and safe place for people to grow up, right?" he says. "We're supposed to _protect_ each other. _Right?_ "

"Whatever, man," Ray says, shaking his head and looking at him like he must be out of his mind.

"If you've got nothing better to do with your life than get high every day, I really don't give a crap. But get a job to pay for it. If I ever see or hear again that you're pushing on these grounds, I'll go right to the chief of police and see that your life as you know it is ruined. If I don't just kick your ass myself."

Then he lets go of him and leaves him leaning against the lockers wide-eyed as he walks off. All the other students in the hall stare after him, probably wondering who he thinks he is, not to mention if he's gone a little crazy. He realizes all at once how young they all look to him now.

 

Time passes, flowing past more gently and unnoticeably than it ever did before he imprinted, and then one night after he phases there is the incredibly strange immediate feeling that he is not alone in his head. Panic that is not his own grips him hotly, accelerates his own heart rate for a moment as he first processes it. Then he becomes aware of a scared and slightly incoherent voice spilling out disjointed questions and exclamations, accompanied by vivid images seen through some other pair of eyes somewhere else. Wolf eyes.

_Who?—Who is that?_ comes the confused voice.

It's not a spoken voice, Sam realizes. It's _thought._

_That can't mean he's seeing me, what is this? What is this it's...No this still is not real I can't be..._

_Paul?_ Sam thinks. _Is that you? Can you hear this?_

There is nothing but a jumbled processing of information coming from the other's mind for a moment as he registers everything going through Sam's head, reluctant to accept it as anything that makes sense, but slowly starting to latch on.

_Sam Uley?_ he finally says in more of a directed piece of speech. _No way. What the fuck?_

_How long have you been like this?_ As soon as he asks, the vague recollections fire through Paul's head and his as well—he felt really weird while driving and had to pull over and get out for some fresh air, then phased right there and has been hiding away in the woods since just before dark. _Hang on, Paul, I can see where you are. I'm coming to find you and I'll help you change back. It's gonna be alright._

It is a little surprising how naturally it comes to him after all, doing this Alpha thing.

From that point on, being in the woods as a wolf isn't lonely anymore. He has a pack. He didn't even realize how much he was waiting for this. After Paul, there is then Jared Morganroth. Then Embry Call.

And then Jacob Black, who is in love with Chief Swan's daughter. He says he _needs_ to see her. He all but gets down on his knees and begs Sam to make an exception for her.

He just keeps telling him the same things, not letting himself budge at all. Absolutely not. Too dangerous. It's out of the question.

Finally, after Jacob finally sees her long enough to have a painful conversation with her about how they can't stay friends now, he says angrily to him, "I can't believe this. You _know_ the risk of me hurting her is almost nothing. You said yourself I'm learning to control myself faster than anybody else did."

"Doesn't make any difference," Sam says tiredly; they've been over all this before.

"This isn't just about the risk of physically hurting her, is it?"

He looks him straight in the eye, unaffected, but says nothing.

"You think just because I haven't imprinted on Bella it's going to end badly," Jacob says. "The kind of love you have isn't the only kind that means something, you know."

He thinks distantly of him and Leah walking along the beach hand-in-hand, laughing in the dark at movies at the theatre in Port Angeles, and he realizes for the first time that there is something about those moments that slightly resembles the pictures of Jacob and Bella together he has seen in his head.

"I do know that," Sam says, now speaking a little quietly. "It still doesn't change anything."

 

Too much happening in one evening. All during an angry building storm, the redheaded vampire has escaped them again and Bella Swan almost got herself killed diving off a cliff and now Harry is getting rushed to the hospital because he saw it all and had a heart attack when his kids...

Both of them. Son _and_ daughter. It is like a cruel joke getting played on him.

Everyone in the pack is on overload only able to deal with one thing at a time, and Sam feels like his blood never stops pumping rapidly for hours on end with everything he has to react to so quickly. Make sure Bella's okay, watch for where Victoria's gone off to, help Sue and Harry without letting anyone see Seth and Leah. Sam is still with Jacob and Bella while the others stay phased and try to help the two of them through it, explaining what is happening to them and trying to get them back to normal as soon as possible. Finally, about forty minutes after he and his sister both phased, Seth manages to turn back first but Leah is still having trouble and can't relax.

At last Sam joins them. And the tone of the chaotic mental conversation among the pack shifts intensely right away.

_You!_ she is just saying, not thinking in complete and coherent speech. _You you—oh this is too—_

After he and Leah become linked this way for the first time, it isn't long before a few of the voices start gradually dropping out. The others are changing back, feeling like they're intruding way too much as they perceive the deeply personal things that helplessly and naturally start to be collectively remembered in his and Leah's heads, very distant memories now sharp and much too close again.

_"I bet I know what your mind would sound like"..."I just wish I understood what it is about yourself you seem so afraid of"..."You're really warm"..."I promise you'll be able to get away from me from now on"..._

And this is something he never could have been prepared for and which he is defenseless against. Living those moments again as they flood over him powerfully with the emotions that she still has attached to the memories makes it almost like _he_ can still remember those feelings. Even if it is just in a fleeting and vicariously experienced way, it is impossible to feel disconnected from her right now. He _is_ her, he thinks what she does and sees what she does and feels what she does and it is too much but his heart can't not ardently reach for her once again.

Suddenly he has no control of his thoughts, what he says or what he remembers. She sees his own memories of that past, Emily's face the very first time he saw her, what the elders told him about imprinting being the way werewolves sometimes find their soul mate, and all at once he feels the singing pang in Leah in response and her recoiling desperately away from what he is showing her, like she is locked up in the tight darkness of her mind and banging against the walls trying to break herself out and escape this.

_Emily—EMILY—She's your—Oh no no no I don't want to know this please—_

He pulls his head away from those thoughts and back to the present situation. _Listen, Leah, don't be scared. You're going to be okay, but you've got to try to listen to me and calm down like Seth did. You've got to get to your dad._

Her head is still on fire and thrashing, panicking and communicating only uncontrolled fragments of terrified thoughts. _My—dad—NO! He was—oh God oh no he was here—_

_I know. He's not dead, he's in the hospital._ He wills himself to sink below the distracting storm of her thoughts and emotions to find the quiet and calm center he always has in himself, but it is hard even for him to completely guard himself from what she is experiencing. _Don't think about it right now, just clear your head and relax. Try to focus on what I'm feeling and just feel that._

_but—No no I can't Sam—This can't be it's like burning I can't think—_

_Yes you can, trust me. You only feel hot because that means you're still too upset to change back, but you're fine. It'll pass, you just have to calm down, baby. It'll be okay..._

And finally she can.

 

Harry Clearwater is the only thing that is bearable for him to remember about that night he hurt Emily. After he called him, he met him at the hospital and thought of things Sam wouldn't have thought of in his half-crazed condition to give a believable story about what happened to her and how she was rescued.

He remembers how he was sitting in the waiting room, completely motionless in his misery, feeling like there was nothing to do but stay there and not leave her even as another part of him felt he should get away and never go near her again. At one point Harry sat down next to him, bringing him a cup of coffee. As he held it out to him, Sam looked at it frozen in alarm a long moment before finally taking it and saying in a hoarse voice, "Thanks."

Harry put his hand on his shoulder, giving it an assuring squeeze. "She's going to be okay," he said.

He shook his head hopelessly. "No, she won't."

"It could have been a lot worse."

Sam let out a sick-sounding, shaky breath. The remorse in his next words was so deep it sounded hard for him to even articulate it right. "Harry...I'm so sorry I didn't listen to you about Leah..."

He just sighed a little. "I know. It's okay."

"Now I know I was being _so stupid_ and...if only I'd done what you said and broken up with her, she would have been hurt, but at least I could have ended things before they got so much uglier..."

Harry looked forward and stayed silent in thought for a while. He reached inside his jacket and Sam distantly registered some surprise when he took out a flask and unscrewed the cap. In different circumstances, he probably would have laughed at the very idea of Leah's dad sneaking a drink in a hospital, but he just watched carelessly as he took a drink with a very weary expression. Then Harry looked to the side at him with a second thought, and down at the cup of coffee he still hadn't touched, and held the flask out to him with his brow raised a little in question.

Sam looked down at it, staying still, and then shook his head in the tiniest movement. "No."

He put it back away and then started looking forward again. Then he said, "For what it's worth...I really did hope that somehow you'd still be able to work things out with Leah some day. I never meant to make it sound like you're no good for her anymore because of this. In fact...ever since all this madness got started, I've sort of come to think of you as a son."

For a brief instant, through the heaviness of his expression Sam looked a little taken aback. And touched.

"Thanks, Harry," he said. "That's...That means a lot for you to say, after everything..."

"Hey. Try not to be so hard on yourself. Given everything you're dealing with, you've actually risen to the occasion pretty honorably...You're a good guy. You've just had pretty bad things happen to you lately is all."

Starting to look very distant as he became absorbed in his thoughts, Sam said, "Do you really think it's worth all this? The treaty? The legends, they make it sound like such a great and noble thing...to be a wolf. It isn't like that at all. How am I really much better than what the Cullens are?"

Harry shook his head briefly. "Emily is only in there at all because of the Cullens," he said, gesturing toward the hallway. "Remember that. Remember _they're_ the enemy and you'll always understand why it has to be this way. Maybe it's a lot of sacrifice for what we do to be able to protect our people. Our families. Maybe it _isn't_ that noble or pretty, and it can't be, it just is the way it is. It's still not a bad thing to be. I'm sure it won't always seem so horrific. After a while it'll just feel like a part of who you are."

Sam vaguely reflects on this with the words echoing in his memory as he rushes into the hospital a year and a half later, the same hospital, and he's one of the last ones to make it there. He stops abruptly when he finds the others where they are all gathered there. It's a whole crowd there now: all the Clearwaters, Billy, Charlie Swan, Jared, Paul. And he stops so suddenly because of their faces, the resigned stillness with which they are sitting or standing in place like there is nothing left to wait for; right away he knows.

After the hectic non-stop chaos of the past few hours of this evening and the constant demand for quick action, help the Clearwaters track Victoria help Bella get here get back there, there is suddenly nothing to do. Harry is gone. Everything stops all at once and all his strength and drive is instantly cut away right from his legs, and before he knows it he is collapsing weakly back into a chair with a very heavy fall, nearly missing the seat and just sinking all the way down to the floor.

Sitting in another chair directly across from him is Leah. While Sue and Seth are sitting embraced tightly with heavy shuddering breaths coming out of them, she just sits on her own, frozen still, looking somehow very coldly removed and untouched by her surroundings. Her face has practically no life in it at all, any perceivable emotion wiped cleanly away.

Then, as if she just slowly registers Sam's presence and his intense reaction, she looks up after a moment and meets eyes with him. As he looks back at her with his eyes full of deep sadness and regret, there seems to be some kind of slowly settling understanding in her face. It is a reluctantly accepted reconnection after all this time she was completely in the dark about how everything went wrong. And there is the smallest glimmer of something else in her eyes that he can't begin to understand. Sympathy. As if she _did_ have some anger against him after all this time, whether or not she was conscious of it, and now there can be absolutely none of it left to hold onto.

It already feels almost like what uncontrollably passed between them earlier when they were linked was not even real, and next to the impact of the present tragedy it hardly matters now. He knows that cannot and will not ever happen again. But it is never going to stop being uncomfortable and painful now. They will have to live with hearing each other that way all the time. He probably would have expected it would be better for her if she could have a real explanation for how badly he hurt her a long time ago, but he can already tell that all this has accomplished is bringing up the past and the entire unresolved unfairness of it all over again and making it more complicated for her to accept. 

 

At the funeral reception, Emily goes to sit next to Leah on the couch in her den and Sam can't stop himself from listening to them while he is standing in the hall.

"Hi, honey," Emily says gently, brushing some of Leah's hair behind her shoulder so that it isn't blocking the view of her face as she sits hunched over with her arms crossed on her legs.

Leah doesn't look directly at her, but nothing in her face discourages her presence. After a while of hesitation, she says in a slightly numb and mechanical voice, "You didn't really get those scars from a bear, did you?"

Sam's mouth tightens and he closes his eyes a moment under the weight of hearing the words. Emily's silence following them is the only answer she needs.

"No wonder he seemed so messed up over it that night," she says.

The shame grips him even tighter and then Emily asks in mild surprise, "You saw him that night?"

Leah stays silent a moment, not explaining. "I guess he must be the only one who can understand at all what this feels like," she then says, speaking much more quietly than before.

Realizing what she means, Emily shakes her head and reaches for her hand to grip it. "Leah. Your dad wasn't healthy. You knew that."

She swallows deeply, lowering her eyes down to her lap.

"Harry was an elder," Emily goes on. "He already knew all about this. That's the only reason he no longer wanted you and Sam—" Her voice clips off fast as she sees something in Leah's face that seems to forbid that subject right now, and after the slight pause she continues. "He just had a bad heart. If it didn't happen this way, it easily could have happened at some other time."

Leah keeps looking away from her with her eyes mostly empty and distant, and then she slowly shakes her head. "But I'm a girl," she mutters. "That was all I heard the others thinking as soon as it happened and I was with them. 'But I don't get it, she's a girl, that's never happened.' A big shocker, I guess. Even to someone who's already seen some pretty weird things..."

Emily is silent, just squeezing her hand more firmly. Sam goes off to another part of the house, trying to find something else to focus on listening to if it's possible to try to tune them out.

He hasn't even thought of that until now. For all he knows she's right. Seth is in pretty bad shape over the way it happened too, but he's getting through it. It seems like he'll be okay. But perhaps it is an especially heavy burden in several ways being the only female in the pack, the completely unexpected one, in an undeniable sense the unwanted one. He can already see she will never want it, not after all this. She won't learn to accept and embrace it after getting used to it like the others.

Like all of the others except for him.

 

Leah once said that despite how much she couldn't understand about him anymore, she still knew him. And he still knows her, too.

He can't be fooled by everything she does to try to hide her pain now. She has never liked to have her most vulnerable feelings out in the open and always preferred to suffer in silence and tough it out on her own rather than have others feeling sorry for her, so it is obvious to him that having not just her thoughts but everything she feels shared with the pack is a nightmare. And he sees the way she adjusts to it by learning to just close herself off emotionally, to draw herself into a cold hard shell of bitterness and anger so the others will not get so much access to her deeper and more sensitive feelings. But after a while, it starts to seem like her habit of suppressing her feelings is extending to the way she is all the time, not just when in her wolf form. The ways she shuts herself off to bury her own emotions means she never seems to fully experience everyone else's emotions either, like she has become desensitized. When the rest of them all start feeling Jacob's suffering because he is losing Bella so she can become their enemy, she should probably understand better than anyone, but perhaps for that very reason his pain doesn't seem to touch her at all. And the more she flinches away from and discourages the others' pity and sympathy, the less eager they are to give it.

None of them can understand because they did not know her the way Sam did before. They do not completely understand that she wasn't always like this. They don't know that not that long ago she was not this bitter and resentful person at all, that she used to chew bubblegum and listen to the same catchy songs over and over again on her stereo and go to parties wearing her hair up in a ponytail that would bounce chipperly when she was dancing. And though it gets harder with time for him to envision it clearly and exactly as it was, there must have been a younger and much more carefree Sam Uley in that time that fit somehow with that picture of her. But now they are both so heavily burdened that it is so difficult sometimes to remember and imagine they were that young and things were ever that simple. He can hardly connect his vague memory of the way she used to laugh with the way she is now. And he knows she used to have a certain way of smiling at him...

But he can't remember anymore what it looked like when she smiled like that, what was so distinctive about it. He only knows that sometimes it seemed like it meant _I know you,_ and in those moments it did not matter if he didn't know himself, and that now it is gone.

 

Sometimes he dreams of him and Leah diving together that one day during the summer they spent so much time together. That very long fall that seems to never end, a story never satisfyingly closed. For him the dream and the memory is not romantic anymore, of course, and it is not happy nor necessarily saddening, but it is still strong and haunting in a peculiar way.

He sees them in the dark blue under the ocean surface, finding each other, reaching for each other, as the push and pull of the waves tosses them around. The waves, the sea, the force of the earth itself pulls and throws them but they reach and grasp onto each other anyway and hold on. They don't let go.

There must be something that is always in the human spirit and can never be completely destroyed that does this, holds on despite all the forces that rip things apart and is capable of surviving anything. The kind of passionate persistence and sheer will and resistance to submission that makes people free. There must be some part of him that is kept alive in Leah in her determination to not let go, her inability to completely give up the pain that is all of him she has left. A part of him that otherwise would be left lonely and adrift, dead and forgotten to everyone and to him most of all, but could not ever be completely killed.

He knows what some of the others in the pack can't help thinking of the profound and indescribable happiness he has with Emily. That it is mindless happiness, a meaningless kind. But even in the most perfect relationship that could never be tainted, there is still self-reflection. There can still be misery in that. He can tell Emily "I love you" every day and feel how completely true it is, and she will look warmly and lovingly at him and also know how true it is. But as mindless as it might seem he is and as much as it means everything to _him_ , even he can never escape the knowledge that it does not and will never mean as much as when he said it to Leah. And Emily will never look at him quite the same way when she hears it as she did.

Emily's face may be the one that has been physically marred by his mistakes. But sometimes Leah's face is still the one he sees when he reflects on all the harm he has done and swears it is not forgotten, that he will repent somehow, he has learned somehow, he will hurt no more. He will not be like him. In a way it is still all for her more than anyone.

Because being a better man than the kind his father was doesn't necessarily always have its rewards, and there was a time he did not realize this, but it still never made any difference to him. Most of the time being a werewolf is all sacrifice, and on top of that he bears the weight of being the one who leads them all even though it was never his born right or responsibility, the one who doesn't have to do anything but does everything. With or without Emily, with our without vampires and magic, that is who he is. The Sam who Leah knew would relinquish any great happiness to set things right if he had the choice. In the end he would always accept the burden of doing what is good no matter what the cost for him, he would always choose to suffer rather than let others suffer, and maybe that is where there is the only justice in him being denied any choice about finally taking something he deserves.

This is why she told him once "I know I have to let you go," and why she cannot let him go. She, if nobody else, knows for sure that he never would have chosen to leave. In a way Emily never can, she knows who he is.

He cannot remember. But she always will.


End file.
